25 Spring Awards for Graduate Students (Spring 2025)

Established by alumni, friends, and former students to recognize contributions and services of Charles W. Gear, head of the department from 1985-90. Gear was a pioneer in automatic numerical methods. He wrote the operating system for ILLIAC II, developed the first successful general program for solving stiff differential equations, and a landmark program for automatic integration of ordinary differential equations.

Eligibility: This award is for an outstanding graduate student. The recipient(s) must remain a student for at least one semester following the award (students graduating in May 2025 are NOT eligible; students who will be registered for courses in summer 2025 or fall 2025 are eligible). Typically, this award goes to doctoral students late in their graduate studies.

Required Materials:

1. Siebel School Awards Cover Sheet.
2. Unofficial transcripts for your current degree program at U of I. Unofficial transcripts can be obtained for free at: https://apps.uillinois.edu/selfservice/ 
3. Up-to-date CV or resume. 

Optional Materials:

1. Optional essays as detailed in the Cover Sheet. 

Apply: Please submit all materials as a single PDF by the due date and time (Monday, March 31st at 11:59PM CT) to the Siebel School Awards Team at awardsinfo@cs.illinois.edu. 

This award is for a graduate student(s) showing exceptional research promise early in their graduate studies, who has passed qualifying exams. Established by AVANT! Corporation in honor of Professors C. L. (Dave) Liu and Jane W-S. Liu. Dave Liu is recognized as one of computer science's most prominent educators. As a researcher, he is best known for developing the rate-monotonic scheduling algorithm (1973), the theoretical basis of modern methods and tools for predicting the timing behavior of multi-programmed real-time systems. Jane Liu is a renowned researcher in real-time systems. In 1993, she developed PERTS (Prototyping Environment for Real-Time Systems), a commercially successful system of analysis, validation, and simulation.

Eligibility: Applicants must be graduate students that have passed their qualifying exam. Students in their first, second, or third years are preferred. The recipient must remain a student for at least one semester following the award (students graduating in May 2025 are NOT eligible; students who will be registered for courses in summer 2025 or fall 2025 are eligible).

Required Materials:

1. Siebel School Awards Cover Sheet.
2. Unofficial transcripts for your current degree program at U of I. Unofficial transcripts can be obtained for free at: https://apps.uillinois.edu/selfservice/ 
3. Up-to-date CV or resume. 

Optional Materials:

1. Optional essays as detailed in the Cover Sheet. 

Apply: Please submit all materials as a single PDF by the due date and time (Monday, March 31st at 11:59PM CT) to the Siebel School Awards Team at awardsinfo@cs.illinois.edu. 

Established in 2011 by Dr. Kenichi Miura, a distinguished alumnus of the department (MS '71, PhD '73), this award honors a graduate student for outstanding accomplishments in High Performance Computing. At Illinois, Dr. Miura worked on the ILLIAC IV project. After graduation, he joined Fujitsu, eventually holding several key leadership positions in Fujitsu's supercomputing and HPC groups. In 2003, he joined Japan's National Institute of Informatics as a professor. Dr. Miura received the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award from the IEEE Computer Society in 2009 in recognition of his leadership in developing groundbreaking vector supercomputer hardware and software. Dr. Miura is a member of the Engineering Academy of Japan.

Eligibility: Applicants must be graduate students with demonstrated experience in High Performance Computing (HPC). 

Required Materials:

1. Siebel School Awards Cover Sheet.
2. Unofficial transcripts for your current degree program at U of I. Unofficial transcripts can be obtained for free at: https://apps.uillinois.edu/selfservice/ 
3. Up-to-date CV or resume. 
4. Document with answer to the following questions. Each answer should be on a separate page and each answer should be no longer than 500 words. 
   1. What specific experience (conferences, courses, research) do you have with High Performance Work (HPC) work? (For example: Conferences such as SC, ISC, HPDC, or IPDPS, courses such as CS554 and CS533, etc.)
   2. Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time. This does not need to be school-related and can mean more than just a title; you may describe taking the lead role in organizing an event or project or having explicit responsibilities to take care of a family member or others close to you. Please consider sharing what you accomplished and what you learned in your response.

Optional Materials:

1. Optional essays as detailed in the Cover Sheet. 

Apply: Please submit all materials as a single PDF by the due date and time (Monday, March 31st at 11:59PM CT) to the Siebel School Awards Team at awardsinfo@cs.illinois.edu. 

This award is for an outstanding graduate student(s) based on academic performance and computer hardware/architecture design creativity. It was established by family, friends, former students, and colleagues upon Professor W. J. Poppelbaum's death in 1993. He came to Illinois in 1954 and joined the solid state research group under Professor John Bardeen, working on an electrolytic analog of a junction transistor. He joined the Digital Computer Laboratory a year later, in charge of circuit research. Poppelbaum was on the faculty from 1955-89 and developed the basic circuits of ILLIAC II.

Eligibility: Applicants must be graduate students with demonstrated experience in computer hardware/architecture design. 

Required Materials:

1. Siebel School Awards Cover Sheet.
2. Unofficial transcripts for your current degree program at U of I. Unofficial transcripts can be obtained for free at: https://apps.uillinois.edu/selfservice/ 
3. Up-to-date CV or resume. 
4. Document with answer to the following questions. Each answer should be on a separate page and each answer should be no longer than 500 words. 
   1. What specific experiences (conferences, courses, research) do you have with computer hardware and/or architecture design work?
   2. Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time. This does not need to be school-related and can mean more than just a title; you may describe taking the lead role in organizing an event or project or having explicit responsibilities to take care of a family member or others close to you. Please consider sharing what you accomplished and what you learned in your response.

Optional Materials:

1. Optional essays as detailed in the Cover Sheet. 

Apply: Please submit all materials as a single PDF by the due date and time (Monday, March 31st at 11:59PM CT) to the Siebel School Awards Team at awardsinfo@cs.illinois.edu.