Monash Memo - articles - 19 February 2002

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Wallace Awards for IT research excellence

Four outstanding Monash academics were this year'srecipients of the Faculty of Information Technology awards for researchexcellence, the 2001 Wallace Awards.

In announcing the prizes, dean ofthe Faculty of Information Technology Professor John Rosenberg said thestandard had been so high that four winners were announced this yearinstead of the usual three.

Prizes were awarded to Professor DavidAbramson for his research into virtual super-computers and to AssociateProfessor Kate Smith for her work in the development of neural networksand other intelligent techniques for solving optimisationproblems.

Associate Professor Henry Wu was also acknowledged for hisresearch, as was Associate Professor Ingrid Zukerman for her work inapplying techniques for reasoning under uncertainty to natural languageprocessing and user-modelling.

"I would like to congratulate thisyear's winners for their outstanding research performance. Their resultsare a pleasing indicator of the quality of research emanating from theIT faculty," Professor Rosenberg said.

"This year's recipientsexemplify the spirit of the awards in that they represent the veryhighest of standards as established by Emeritus Professor ChrisWallace."

The Faculty of IT Wallace Awards for Research Excellencewere introduced to recognise and reward excellent researchers within thefaculty.

The awards were named in honour of Emeritus Professor ChrisWallace, who was foundation professor of computer science at Monash andone of Australia's leading IT researchers.

The award is either a$10,000 bonus and $30,000 research funds or a $10,000 bonus and onesemester of teaching and administration relief (with the $30,000 paid tothe recipient's school).

Pictured above, from left; Professor David Abramson,Associate Professor Ingrid Zukerman, Professor John Rosenberg, AssociateProfessor Kate Smith and Associate Professor Henry Wu.