The UbiComp Steering Committee is pleased to announce the nomination process for the 2025 Gaetano Borriello Outstanding Student award. Named in honour of the late Gaetano Borriello, this award recognizes a PhD student who is making outstanding contributions to academia and society, and is making strong and rounded contributions to the field of Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing.

The student receiving this award will be recognized during the UbiComp/ISWC 2025 conference, held in Espoo, Finland, from 14-16th October. They will receive a small financial reward and a certificate to celebrate their achievement.

ELIGIBILITY

1. Nominees must be pursuing a research-based degree in any country in a field related to ubiquitous and pervasive computing.
2. Nominees must have been a co-author and major contributor to at least 1 UbiComp and/or IMWUT paper (any year).
3. Nominee should be a current student in good standing as of the time of the nomination.

DEADLINE

Nominations are due by August 27th 2025, AOE.

NOMINATION PROCESS

For students to be nominated, there are two steps.

Step One: The student must create a single PDF that includes all of the following materials, and upload it through to: https://tinyurl.com/gaetano25.

• A cover letter that includes:
  • Your name, contact email address and affiliation.
  • The date you started your doctoral program (Year/Month).
  • Expected graduation date of your graduate program (Year/Month).
  • A statement of your rationale as to why you should be considered. This can include:
    1. Intellectual contributions to the academic field in Ubicomp/IMWUT
    2. Important societal, environmental or other benefits arising from your work
    3. Service to the conference/ journal community. In honour of Gaetano this award especially seeks to recognise work of societal importance, e.g. tackling issues of global equity, social and environmental justice.
  • A table listing contributions to Ubicomp/IMWUT (main conference/journal and adjunct proceedings). Please include DOIs for papers in the main proceedings, and a clear indicator of the contribution type (e.g., demo, posters, workshop organiser, workshop paper) for contributions to the adjunct proceedings.
  • The history of your service to IMWUT and UbiComp, and your broader research community.
• A brief summary of research (maximum 2 pages, can be a dissertation proposal abstract or similar).
• A brief academic CV.

Step Two: Students must have a recommendation letter from their research advisor, submitted separately. The letter should confirm the eligibility of the student and briefly state their rationale for supporting the nomination. In addition, students may have an optional, additional recommendation letter from other members of the UbiComp research community.

Endorsers, please upload your recommendation letter to the following URL by August 27th 2025, AOE: https://tinyurl.com/gaetano25-endorsers

After the deadline, students who have made complete nominations will be sent a confirmation of receipt. In case you submit your nomination but do not hear from us by 31st August, please send an email to awards-2025@ubicomp.org

The award is decided jointly by a committee of domain experts. Our combined judgement is final. Members with a known or self-declared conflict of interest will not participate in reviewing conflicted nominations and in the final decisions of awards.

The student winning the award will be notified in the first week of September, and the award recipient will be announced during the conference.