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BCS Lovelace Medal 2020: awarded to Prof Ian Horrocks & Prof Michael Wooldridge

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The 2020 Lovelace Medal is to be shared between Ian Horrocks (Professor of Computer Science, University of Oxford), Nicholas Jennings (Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Vice-Provost for Research and Enterprise, Imperial College London) and Michael Wooldridge (Head of Department and Professor of Computer Science, University of Oxford, and Programme Director for AI at The Alan Turing Institute).

The award is presented annually to individuals who, in the opinion of BCS Academy Awards Committee, have made a significant contribution to the advancement of Information Systems.

Ian Horrocks changed the whole approach to logic-based knowledge representation, demonstrating that a combination of sound theoretical foundations and insightful software engineering enabled the development of correct and scalable reasoning systems. (https://bit.ly/2UmfalE)

Professors Jennings and Wooldridge have been recognised for their major contribution as founders of the multi-agent systems (MAS) field. Their work on cooperating, coordinating and negotiating agents has been instrumental in transforming the nascent area from one studied by tens of people, to the global community it is today. (https://bit.ly/3luklMi)

The Lovelace Medal will be presented to Profs Horrocks, Jennings and Wooldridge at a ceremony at the Royal Society in London in autumn 2021.

The recipient of the Lovelace Medal is decided each year by a distinguished panel of academics, chaired in 2020 by Prof. Anthony G Cohn.

Opening and closing dates for nominations for the 2021 award will be announced shortly.

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