Milner Award facts for kids

The Royal Society Milner Award is a special prize given out every year by the Royal Society. This famous group of scientists in London, UK, gives the award for amazing work in computer science. It's specifically for researchers from Europe.

The award is named after Robin Milner, who was a brilliant computer scientist. He helped create important things like the programming language ML. Microsoft Research helps support this award.

To win, a researcher must be actively working in computer science. They need to be from Europe or have lived there for at least a year. Winners receive a bronze medal and £5,000. They also get to give a public talk about their research at the Royal Society. A special committee chooses the winners.

Before this award, there was a similar one called the Royal Society and Académie des sciences Microsoft Award. It recognized scientists who used computers to make scientific breakthroughs.

About the Milner Award

This award celebrates top achievements in the field of computer science. It highlights researchers who have made a big difference with their work. The Royal Society wants to encourage new ideas and discoveries in how computers work and what they can do.

Who Can Win?

The award is for computer scientists who are either from Europe or have lived there for at least 12 months. This helps make sure the award supports European talent in technology. The winner is chosen by a committee of experts. These experts include members from the Royal Society, the French Academy of Sciences, and the German Academy of Sciences.

What Do Winners Get?

Besides the honor, winners receive a cool bronze medal. They also get £5,000 as a personal prize. A big part of the award is the chance to give a public lecture. This lecture lets the winner share their exciting research with a wider audience.

Amazing Winners of the Milner Award

The first winner of the Milner Award was Gordon Plotkin in 2012. He gave his lecture in 2013, the same year Serge Abiteboul won. In 2018, Marta Kwiatkowska made history as the first woman to receive the award.

Even if someone isn't European, they can still win. For example, Eugene Myers from America won in 2019. He qualified because he had moved to Germany in 2012. This shows the award looks for talent that has contributed to computer science in Europe. In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the winner's lecture was held online using Zoom.

Milner Award Winners

Year	Image	Winner	Nationality	What They Won For	Ref
2012		Plotkin, GordonGordon Plotkin	British	For his important work on how programming languages work, which influenced how they are designed.
2013		Abiteboul, SergeSerge Abiteboul	French	For his leading research in databases, which had a big impact on science and industry.
2014	–	Schölkopf, BernhardBernhard Schölkopf	German	For being a pioneer in machine learning, especially for his work on 'kernel machines' used widely in science and industry.
2015		Henzinger, ThomasThomas Henzinger	Austrian	For his key advances in checking if computer systems work correctly and safely.
2016		Leroy, XavierXavier Leroy	French	For his amazing work in computer programming, including creating the OCaml programming language.
2017	–	Zisserman, AndrewAndrew Zisserman	British	For his work on how computers understand images and for being a leader in machine learning for vision.
2018		Kwiatkowska, MartaMarta Kwiatkowska	Polish	For her contributions to checking and verifying computer models, especially for systems that involve chance.
2019		Myers, EugeneEugene Myers	American	For developing computer methods that made genome sequencing common and helped analyze biological images.
2020	–	Schmid, CordeliaCordelia Schmid	French	For her work in computer vision and her important contributions to how computers recognize things in images and videos.
2021		Ghahramani, ZoubinZoubin Ghahramani	British / Iranian	For his fundamental contributions to machine learning that uses probabilities.
2022	–	Rogers, YvonneYvonne Rogers	British	For her contributions to how humans and computers interact, and designing technology that focuses on people.
2023		Mallat, StéphaneStéphane Mallat	French	For his key advances in wavelets, used in audio, image, and video processing, and for helping us understand deep neural networks.
2024		Ekert, ArturArtur Ekert	British / Polish	For his pioneering work in quantum communication and computing, which turned quantum information science into an important field.

See also

• List of computer science awards