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Lauri Malmi, Professor of Computer Science at Aalto University, receives the internationally prestigious SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education. His award will be presented at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium in March 2020 in Portland, Oregon, USA.

This annual award started in 1981. Edsger Dijkstra from the Netherlands and Donald Knuth from the USA, both world-famous computer scientists, are among previous receivers of the same award.

‘This is a great honor, as this award has been previously given to some of the most famous researchers in computer science,’ says Professor Malmi.

The SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education honors an individual or group in recognition of a significant contribution to computer science education. Their contribution may take many forms, such as innovating teaching methods, textbook authorship, or development of new teaching tools. The contribution should have had long lasting impact on, and made a significant difference in, computing education.

Malmi receives the award for his leadership in building the international computing education research community, and raising the profile and quality of computing education research and research training.

‘I have contributed in many ways to the development of the research field and helped to improve the quality of research. Researchers in this area have published a myriad of papers that present new teaching innovations and their experience of those innovations, but we also need in-depth theoretical understanding of learning models and processes, and strong empirical evidence that supports those models and processes.’

Malmi also thanks his colleagues and research group for their work and support. ‘Naturally, I haven’t been here alone; I’ve been surrounded by a group of colleagues and many talented doctoral candidates who have showed deep interest in the quality of teaching and related research.’

According to Malmi, the 17 doctoral dissertations that have been completed in the so far have been interesting and motivating part of his work.