This year’s Distinguished Dissertations competition is now open.
Details, including the submission instructions and link are here:

https://www.bcs.org/more/awards-and-competitions/distinguished-dissertations/

For those of you with previous experience of the competition, please
note that deadlines are different (and later) this year. We hope to be
pack to normal next year. In previous years we have used EasyChair to
manage the submissions, this year we have switched to
onlinesurveys.ac.uk.

The deadline for submitting a nomination is 30th June 2020.

Dissertations completed between 1st Jan 2019 and 31st March 2020 are
eligible. (The site above is still being updated to reflect this).

If any problems are experienced, or you have any questions, please email
me for help.

We are also in the process of rebuilding the committee. If you would
like to offer to join, then please contact me stating your research
area. We are keen to maintain a spread of research areas and
appropriate gender split on the committee.

CPHC (the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing), in conjunction
with BCS, annually selects for publication the best British PhD/DPhil
dissertations in computer science. The scheme aims to make more visible
the significant contribution made by the UK – in particular by
post-graduate students – to computer science. Publication also serves to
provide a model for future students.

The selection panel operating on behalf of BCS and CPHC consists of
experienced computer scientists each normally serving on the panel for
three years. The panel will consider any dissertation submitted for a
doctorate in the British Isles in what is commonly understood to be the
field of computer science. Theses which are essentially in another
discipline, despite making use – even very extensive use – of computing,
will not be regarded as eligible. A university is limited to three
dissertation submissions per year, and one per research group.

I hope to announce the results are by the end of the year and, whenever
possible, the prize winner receives their award at the prestigious BCS
Roger Needham Lecture, held at the Royal Society.

Iain Phillips
Loughborough University