Distinguished Dissertation
Award

Overview

Each year, the Classification Society offers a Distinguished Dissertation Award for an outstanding PhD dissertation on the theme of clustering, classification, or related areas of data analysis, encompassing associated theory and/or applications. The Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award is supported by Springer.

The 2024 Distinguished Dissertation Award Winner

The Classification Society congratulates the 2024 Distinguished Dissertation award winner, Dr. Michael Pearce (Reed College). Dr. Reed received his Ph.D. from the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington in 2023. The title of Dr. Pearce's thesis is "Methods for the Statistical Analysis of Preferences, with Applications to Social Science Data".

Eligibility for the 2025 Distinguished Dissertation Award

The 2025 Award totals 500 USD in book vouchers from Springer, and the winner will be invited to present in a special session at the 2025 Classification Society Annual Meeting. The Classification Society will cover travel expenses to the 2025 Annual Meeting of at most 1,500 USD for a North American-based Award winner or at most 2,000 USD for an Award winner based elsewhere.

Criteria for nomination for the Award include:

  • The main topic of the dissertation is in classification, clustering, or a closely related area.
  • The dissertation contains innovative work in theory/methodology and/or innovative or well-developed application(s), and the literature review is thorough.

To be eligible for the 2025 Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award, a Ph.D. dissertation must have been completed – including a successful defense – within the calendar year 2024. Nominations may be made by the dissertation author, supervisor, or related person and must be sent by email. A nomination must include contact information for the nominator and nominee (if different), a URL where the members of the Award Committee can access an online copy of the dissertation, and an electronic (e.g., scanned) cover letter, written and signed by the nominator, stating the date of final completion of the Ph.D. dissertation and outlining why the dissertation merits the award. The nominator must also arrange for two external referee reports to be sent directly to the Award committee chair. If possible, the referees should be at arms-length from the dissertation author and their supervisor. Cover letters should include full bibliographic details for any published papers, proceedings, book chapters, or similar scholarly material that have arisen from the dissertation. For non-English language dissertations, nominators are requested to provide an extended abstract in English and, where relevant, to highlight any papers, proceedings, book chapters, or similar scholarly material associated with the dissertation published in English.

Deadline for Nominations

Nomination packages are due on or before February 1, 2025.

Winners

  • Michael Pearce Reed College

  • Cristina Molero-Rio École Polytechnique

  • Francesco Sanna Passino Imperial College London

  • Michael Gallaugher Baylor University

  • Keefe Murphy Maynooth University

  • Anjali Silva University Health Network

  • Yang Tang

  • Michael Fop University College Dublin

  • Paula Murray

  • Zsuzsa Bakk Universiteit Leiden

  • Irene Vrbik University of British Columbia - Okanagan

  • Kim de Roover Tilburg University

  • Jeffrey L. Andrews University of British Columbia - Okanagan

  • Theodore Damoulas University of Warwick

  • Frank Busing Universiteit Leiden

  • Daniel Aloise Polytechnique Montreal

Join Us

Become a member and contribute new ideas

Join Us