Guidelines for SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Nominations & Recommendations

How to present Ph.D. dissertations in the best light.

First awarded in 2018, the ACM SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award celebrates the excellence and diversity of Ph.D. dissertation work in human-computer interaction around the world. Recently graduated students with completed Ph.D. dissertations who have published their work at ACM SIGCHI conferences are eligible for receiving this award.

Since 2020, I am the chair for the SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation subcommittee. I have received multiple questions about the best way to nominate a student for this award. I have also seen some very good (as well as some bad) nominations. I wrote this document to help nominators present their candidates in the very best light. It is aimed at people wanting to nominate a student as well as people who have been asked to write letters of recommendation supporting such nominations.

While I am the current chair for the committee, note that this is not an official document (for one thing, it is posted on my personal blog rather than on the SIGCHI website). That means these are my own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of SIGCHI or the SIGCHI awards committee.

• Length: Letters of reference for this award are typically two pages in length, although longer letters are not uncommon. However, lengthy letters can be disadvantageous for an awards subcommittee with a large reviewing load. I would recommend to stay around two pages.
• Focus on the contribution: Award reviewers want to understand a dissertation’s contribution to the global field of HCI in all its scale and diversity. While dissertations obviously need to make this case as well, the advisor and the senior referee is often better placed than students to explain the contribution in relation to the rest of the field.
• Why is this work novel and unique? Explaining how the work is different from existing well-known HCI research — especially any that has already been awarded in prior years — helps the award subcommittee better appreciate the uniqueness of the work.
• Mind your audience: The awards subcommittee is small and will not have in-depth expertise across the entire field of HCI. Ensure that your letter explains the dissertation in sufficiently general terms that a competent HCI researcher can understand it without being an expert in your particular subfield.
• Publication counts: Students must publish at SIGCHI conferences to be eligible for the award, but there is no requirement and no ranking based on the number of publications in the dissertation. Therefore, arguments based solely on the number of publications at CHI, for example, are less effective than more qualitative arguments.
• Discuss the dissertation, not the candidate: Limit your letter to discussing the dissertation. There is no need to sing the praises of the candidate or talk about their personal attributes. The award is given in recognition of outstanding Ph.D. dissertations, not outstanding Ph.D.s.
• Never lose sight of the human: Our field features the world “human” in its title, so be sure to provide the human perspective on the dissertation work in your letter. How will the work help real people with real problems they encounter in their lives?
• Evidence of impact: A Ph.D. dissertation is often the very first academic work that a person ever produces, and most of it is going to be hot off the press. This means that assessing its impact is difficult. However, any evidence you can provide on how the work has influenced society, other researchers, or stakeholders will help the award review.

I hope this helps, and I look forward to seeing some great dissertations submitted to the committee in the future!