The Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award
supported by Chapman and Hall/CRC

The Award will be for the best PhD (or approximately equivalent
doctoral) dissertation nominated by an annual deadline.  The
theme is clustering, classification, related areas of data
analysis, encompassing both associated theory and/or applications.

The Award is administered by CSNA.  An evaluation committee is set
up by CSNA to evaluate the nominated theses.  In 2007-2008, the
evaluation committee is: Fionn Murtagh (chair, Dept. of Computer Science,
Royal Holloway, University of London; and Science Foundation Ireland),
Samantha Prins (Dept. of Mathematics & Statistics, James Madison
University), Douglas Steinley (Dept. of Psychological Sciences,
University of Missouri-Columbia) and Willem Heiser (Dept. of Psychology,
University of Leiden).

Nominations will be through the evaluation committee chair.  It may
be useful to have printed copies sent to committee members, but in
any case web-accessible versions have to be made available.   The
evaluation panel may seek one or two external referee reports for
each nominated dissertation.

Typical criteria for nomination for the Award include:
(i) the most innovative or impressive work in theory/methodology,
or the most innovative or well developed application(s); and
(ii) the literature review has to be thorough.

Nominations are to be received by 1 February each year, from the
author (PhD), their advisor/supervisor, or other related person.
Nomination includes the name and contact points, an online copy of
the dissertation, and a short description of why the dissertation
merits the award (see above).  A decision is made by the evaluation
committee by 1 May.  The evaluation committee can recommend one award;
an award and a runner-up; two joint winners; or other combinations
if they think it appropriate.

For the next submission deadline, 1 February 2008, nominated PhDs
have to have been successfully completed in the calendar years
2005, 2006 or 2007.

For non-English language theses, it is requested to provide an extended
abstract, and (where relevant) pointers to papers associated with the
thesis that have been published.

In 2008 the Award totals US$ 500 in book vouchers from Chapman and
Hall/CRC.  The winner will be invited to make a presentation in a
special plenary session at the CSNA Annual Meeting.  Up to $500 of
the Award winner's travel expenses to the Annual Meeting will be
covered by CSNA.

Contact for information and nominations: fmurtagh at acm . org

CSNA, http://www.classification-society.org/csna/csna.html

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