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Milner Award and Lecture
Nominations now open
The call for nominations is now open. Please ensure you read through the guidance document fully.
The Royal Society is encouraging nominations of joint collaborations, groups or teams for almost all its medals to better represent how contemporary science is undertaken. In addition, the Society is extremely keen to broaden the diversity of those nominated for its awards, so do please consider all contacts and colleagues.
You do not have to be a Fellow of the Royal Society to nominate or to be nominated for any of the Royal Society medals and awards.
Nominations close on Friday 23 February 2024 at 23:59 GMT.
Milner Award and Lecture 2024 winner
Professor Artur Ekert
The Milner Award and Lecture 2024 is awarded to Professor Artur Ekert FRS for his pioneering contributions to quantum communication and computation, which transformed the field of quantum information science from a niche academic activity into a vibrant interdisciplinary field of industrial relevance. Professor Ekert will be given the award at the Prize Lecture which will be organised for late 2024.
The award
The Royal Society Milner Award and Lecture, supported by Microsoft Research in order to help sustain a thriving research community in Europe, is the premier European award for outstanding achievement in computer science. It is awarded to recognise an outstanding European computer scientist, someone who has made a substantial contribution and who is likely to go on to further top-level achievement. The recipient is a European researcher or researcher who has been resident in Europe for 12 months or more, and is chosen by the Council of the Royal Society on the recommendation of the Milner Award Committee. The Committee is made up of Fellows of the Royal Society, Members of the Académie des sciences (France) and Members of Leopoldina (Germany). The award is named in honour of Professor Robin Milner FRS (1934-2010), a pioneer in computer science. The medal is of bronze, is awarded annually and is accompanied by a gift of £5,000.
Eligibility
The Royal Society Milner award is open to European citizens or those who have been residents for at least 12 months. There are no restrictions on career stage and nominations will remain valid and shall be considered by the award selection committee throughout three nomination cycles. Nominees cannot be employed by Microsoft and its affiliates (full- or part-time), including anybody who had had a formal contract or remunerative relationship with the company in the 12 months prior to nomination.
Nominations
Nominations are now open.
Past winners
Professor Stéphane Mallat was awarded the Royal Society Milner Award and Lecture in 2023 for his key advances in the fundamental principles of wavelets, including theory for audio, image and video processing, his entrepreneurship, and for contributing significantly to advancing the understanding of deep neural networks.
Professor Yvonne Rogers was awarded the Royal Society Milner Award and Lecture in 2022 for contributions to Human-Computer Interaction and the design of human-centred technology.
Professor Zoubin Ghahramani FRS was awarded the Royal Society Milner Award and Lecture in 2021 for his fundamental contributions to probabilistic machine learning.
Dr Cordelia Schmid was awarded the Royal Society Milner Award in 2020 and presented her lecture Automatic understanding of the visual world.
See full list of all past winners of the Royal Society Milner Award.