ACM India Outstanding Applied Innovation in Computing Award

Nominations

Call for Nominations: ACM India Outstanding Applied Innovation in Computing Award

Overview

The ACM India Outstanding Applied Innovation in Computing (OAIC) Award aims to recognize organizations to highlight, acknowledge, and reward exceptional examples of applied computing innovation, for profit or non-profit objectives. While the application can be in any domain, the core focus of the innovation should be on computing. The award will be given to the organizations including one winner and up to two honourable mentions every year. The winner and the honourable mentions organizations will be felicitated at the ACM India Annual Event along with a cash prize of INR 5 Lakhs and INR 2 Lakhs respectively. Financial support for this award is provided by Zoho Corporation.

Deadline

Nominations are due by August 15, 2025, 11 pm IST. This is a hard deadline. The recipient will be announced by January 15, 2026.

Eligibility

  • The applied innovation pertains to the computing domain.
  • The proposing organisation should have a registered office in India.
  • Majority of the contributions should have been made by members based in India (even if working for a multinational company).
  • The nominator should be a part of the proposing organization at the time of submitting the application. In a case where the nominator is no longer associated with the organization at the time of award announcement - he/she should be replaced with a new nominator.
  • The first public disclosure of the innovation was made on or after January 1, 2020. The public disclosure could be in any form where it is shared with audiences who are not a part of the parent organization including but not limited to press releases, client deployment, patent filing, scientific paper submission etc.
  • A maximum of 10 contributors can be listed against the candidate initiative. One of them should be marked as the corresponding contributor (a.k.a. nominator).
  • While information disclosed as part of the application and verification processes will be considered confidential to the committee, the nominator should get any required clearances in advance, as necessary, to share this information with ACM India.

Nomination

  • The nominator must take prior consent of all the listed contributors (a.k.a. nominees) before submitting the nomination.
  • Nominators will be required to indicate whether they are aware of any action committed by any identified contributor that violates the ACM Code of Ethics and ACM’s Core Values. See the Policy for Honors Conferred by ACM .
  • A nomination will remain in consideration for a period of up to 3 years from first submission, provided other eligibility criteria are met; details of the nomination may be updated if a nomination from a previous year is considered in a subsequent year.

Award Committee

The award committee will consist of senior and established professionals and academics in the field of computer science and engineering. The ACM India Council will appoint the committee members for a term up to two years, and it is renewable for one additional term. The membership appointments should be staggered. The ACM India Council will also oversee and provide necessary assistance to the operation of the award committee. The members of the award committee should be members of the ACM. The members of the award committee cannot be a nominator, contributor or endorser of any nominations.

Evaluation Criteria

The awardees will be chosen from the accepted nominations through an extensive selection process led by the Award Committee. The selection will proceed in two stages:

  • In the first stage, all applications will be reviewed by the Award Committee to arrive at a shortlist of top-k (e.g. 5) nominations based on the listed criteria below.
  • In the second stage, the Award Committee will deliberate on the top k (e.g. 5) nominations thus identified to select the award winner(s).

Timelines and Nature of the Award

  • The award will consist of a plaque and a prize of INR 5 Lakhs and 2 Lakhs for the winner and the honorable mentions respectively.
  • The nomination deadline is August 15, 2025 (11 pm IST), and the recipient would be announced by January 15, 2026. No extensions to the nomination deadline will be granted.
  • The award ceremony will be held during the ACM India Annual Event in February/March of the subsequent year. The winning entry will be expected to deliver a talk in the Annual Event (or in any of its collocated events). The costs for the travel and stay of up to 2 members of the winning team will be borne by ACM India.

Submissions

Nominations for the award should be submitted using the online ACM India Award nomination form. Submitted materials should explain the contribution in terms understandable to a non-specialist. Each nomination involves several components:

  • Name, address, phone number, and email address of the nominator.
  • Names and email addresses of the all contributors
  • Suggested citation if the initiative is selected. This should be a concise statement (maximum of 50 words) describing the key features of the innovation and impact thereof for which the innovation merits this award. Note that the final wording for awardees will be at the discretion of the Award Committee.
  • 2-page nomination statement/executive summary addressing why the initiative should receive this award. This should clearly bring out distinguishing features of the initiatives and its impact to draw particular attention that merit the award. Here are some representative (but not prescriptive) details which may be included in the statement:
    • In-use?: has the initiative resulted in a practical outcome that is deployed and in-use? This is to distinguish the initiatives from innovations that are potentially great but did not see the light of the day.
    • Value?: What value has it created? It could be in terms of financials (e.g., cost saved, revenue increased, carbon footprint reduction, growth in number of users) and non-financials (e.g., social good, lives impacted, customer satisfaction improved).
    • Visible?: How visible has the work been internally (within the company) and externally (in the world)? This section should highlight aspects such as media coverage, social media impact, customer testimonials, conference and events where the work was presented, other awards this work might have won etc. has the initiative received.
    • Innovative?: What is the core technology innovation in Computing that powered this work? Why is it novel? While it is not necessary that the initiative is led by scientific papers, one may refer to the relevant scientific artifacts from the public domain.
  • Supporting letters from 3 endorsers with at least 1 being outside the proposing organisation (client, industry leader, etc.). Endorsers ideally should be senior leaders (both from within and outside the organisation) who are well-recognised and credible in their own merit. Each letter must include the name, address, and telephone number of the endorser, and should focus on the impact that the endorser can personally attest to and place in context. The nominator should collect these letters and bundle them for submission.

Acknowledgement

The Award nomination and evaluation procedures will follow ACM's Conflict of Interest Guidelines for Awards Committees and with the ACM Policy for Conferring Honors. If COI issues arise, these issues will be raised to the ACM Awards co-chairs or ACM India Awards Steering Committee for resolution.