Author: Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the executive board of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP), I seek nominations for the 2025 Herbert A. Simon Award.

The Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy recognizes scholars at an early stage of their academic career who are likely to reshape debates at the nexus of Computing and Philosophy by their original research. Previous recipients of the award include:

• 2024: Corey Maley (Purdue University)
• 2023: Kathleen Creel (Northeastern University)
• 2022: Björn Lundgren (Utrecht University)
• 2021: Carissa Véliz (University of Oxford) 
• 2020: no award
• 2019: Juan M. Durán (Delft University of Technology)
• 2018: Thomas C. King (Oxford Internet Institute)
• 2017: Andrea Scarantino (Georgia State University)
• 2016: Marcin Milkowski (The Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
• 2015: Michael Rescorla (University of California-Santa Barbara)
• 2014: Gualterio Piccinini (University of Missouri-St. Louis)
• 2013: Judith Simon (University of Vienna)
• 2012: Patrick Allo (Vrije Universiteit Brussels)
• 2011: John Sullins (Sonoma State)
• 2010: Mariarosaria Taddeo (University of Hertfordshire and University of Oxford)

The Simon award will be presented at the 2025 joint IACAP and AISB conference organized at the University of Twente, Netherlands. Call for papers and symposia will follow in due course.

Please send your nomination(s) through our online form: https://limesurvey.mq.edu.au/index.php/777597?lang=en

For full consideration, please submit your nomination no later than the end of November. This year, the nominations are first considered by our newly-formed award committee, who will make their recommendations to the IACAP board. If you have any questions concerning the nominations, please reach out to me (bjorn.lundgren@fau.de) and the chair of the awards committee, Tom Powers (tpowers@udel.edu). Please CC Brian (brian.ballsun-stanton@mq.edu.au) for technical queries.

Please note that the award committee will prima facie consider around 10 years from receiving a PhD as a cutoff for whether a scholar is at “an early stage of their academic career.” If you for some reason want to nominate someone who received their PhD more than 10 years ago, please state clearly why the board should make an exception. Alternatively, consider whether the individual contribution is sufficient for consideration for the Covey award.

All the best,
Björn Lundgren
Vice President, International Association of Computing and Philosophy

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the executive board of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP), we seek nominations for the 2025 Covey Award.

The Covey Award recognizes senior scholars with a substantial record of innovative research in the field of computing and philosophy broadly conceived. Recipients of the prestigious award include:

Please send your nomination(s) through our online form: https://limesurvey.mq.edu.au/index.php/656829?lang=en

For full consideration, please submit your nomination no later than the end of November. This year, the nominations are first considered by our newly-formed award committee, who will make their recommendations to the IACAP board. If you have any questions concerning the nominations, please reach out to me (bjorn.lundgren@fau.de) and the chair of the awards committee, Tom Powers (tpowers@udel.edu). Please CC Brian (brian.ballsun-stanton@mq.edu.au) for technical queries.
All the best,
Björn Lundgren
Vice President, International Association of Computing and Philosophy

The International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s executive board has selected Associate Professor Corey Maley, for the 2023 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy, which specifically recognizes scholars at an early stage of their academic career whose research is likely to reshape debates at the nexus of Computing and Philosophy.

Corey is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University. He is interested in understanding what, precisely, computation is. To that end, he is currently working on a theory of computation that is broad enough to incorporate distinct types of computation as species (i.e., both digital and analog) in both artifacts and natural systems (i.e., engineered systems and neural systems). At the same time, this theory needs to be narrow enough to avoid making everything computational, or making computation a mere matter of perspective. Finally, this theory should make clear what the various types of computation have in common such that they are all of the same genera, yet distinct enough to count as separate species of that genera. Much of this project has been informed by Corey’s research into analog computation, which is not (as is commonly thought) essentially about continuity. Revealing the differences between analog and digital computation, as well as their similarities, has illuminated what aspects of computation are specific only to digital computation, and not necessary features of computation in general.

Before Purdue, Corey was a faculty member at the University of Kansas. As an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska, he received a B.S. in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Psychology, and a B.A. in Philosophy. After spending a couple of years in a cognitive neuroscience lab at Washington University in St. Louis, he went to graduate school at Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. through the Logic and Philosophy of Science track in the Department of Philosophy.

Dr. Maley will present the Simon Award Keynote Address at IACAP 2024 conference in Eugene, Oregon, 8-10 July 2024.

Please join us at IACAP 2024 to congratulate Dr. Corey Maley on this well-deserved award.