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 2026 Distinguished Dissertation Award Winner
The Classification Society congratulates the 2026 Distinguished Dissertation Award winner, Dr. Efthymios Costa. Dr. Costa received his Ph.D. from Imperial College London in 2025. The title of Dr. Costa's thesis is "Novel unsupervised techniques for mixed-type data".
Eligibility for the 2027 Distinguished Dissertation Award
The 2027 Award totals 500 USD in book vouchers from Springer, and the winner will be invited to present in a special session at the 2027 Classification Society Annual Meeting. The Classification Society will cover travel expenses to the 2027 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 2027 Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award, a Ph.D. dissertation must have been completed – including a successful defense – within the calendar year 2026. 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
Nominations and external referee reports must be submitted to the chair of the Award Committee on or before 11:59 pm EST on February 1, 2027, with the subject line “Nomination Package for CS2027 DDA”. Results will be announced approximately two months after this submission deadline.
Winners
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