IJCAI-26 Awards Announcement
- Award for Research Excellence
- Computers and Thought Award
- John McCarthy Award
- Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award
- How the awards are selected
Award for Research Excellence
2026 recipient
Vice-Chancellor and President of Loughborough University, UK
Professor Jennings is recognized for his seminal contributions to the field of multi-agent systems, including algorithms for multi-agent coordination and the principles of human-agent teamwork, and for his pioneering applications of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems.
The Research Excellence award is given to a scientist who has carried out a program of research of consistently high quality throughout an entire career yielding several substantial results. Past recipients of this honor are the most illustrious group of scientists from the field of Artificial Intelligence.
Past recipients (25)
- 2025 Rina Dechter
- 2024 Thomas Dietterich
- 2023 Sarit Kraus
- 2022 Stuart Russell
- 2021 Richard Sutton
- 2020 Eugene Freuder
- 2019 Yoav Shoham
- 2018 Jitendra Malik
- 2017 Andrew Barto
- 2016 Michael I. Jordan
- 2015 Barbara Grosz
- 2013 Hector Levesque
- 2011 Robert Anthony Kowalski
- 2009 Victor Lesser
- 2007 Alan Bundy
- 2005 Geoffrey E. Hinton
- 2003 Nils Nilsson
- 2001 Donald Michie
- 1999 Judea Pearl
- 1997 Aravind Joshi
- 1995 Herbert Simon
- 1993 Raymond Reiter
- 1991 Marvin Minsky
- 1989 Allen Newell
- 1985 John McCarthy
Computers and Thought Award
2026 recipient
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and, by courtesy, of Psychology at Stanford University
Dr. Wu is recognized for his foundational contributions across computer vision, generative AI, and robotics, uniting neural and symbolic representations to build machines that understand and interact with the physical world.
The Computers and Thought Award is presented at IJCAI conferences to outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence.
The award was established with royalties received from the book, Computers and Thought, edited by Edward Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman. It is currently supported by income from IJCAI funds.
Past recipients (36)
- 2025 Aditya Grover
- 2024 Nisarg Shah
- 2023 Pin-Yu Chen
- 2022 Bo Li
- 2021 Fei Fang
- 2020 Piotr Skowron
- 2019 Guy Van den Broeck
- 2018 Stefano Ermon
- 2017 Devi Parikh
- 2016 Percy Liang
- 2015 Ariel Procaccia
- 2013 Kristen Grauman
- 2011 Malte Helmert
- 2011 Vincent Conitzer
- 2009 Andrew Ng
- 2009 Carlos Guestrin
- 2007 Peter Stone
- 2003 Tuomas Sandholm
- 2001 Daphne Koller
- 1999 Nicholas Jennings
- 1997 Leslie Kaelbling
- 1995 Stuart Russell
- 1995 Sarit Kraus
- 1993 Hiroaki Kitano
- 1991 Martha Pollack
- 1991 Rodney Brooks
- 1989 Henry Kautz
- 1987 Johan de Kleer
- 1985 Hector Levesque
- 1983 Tom Mitchell
- 1981 Gerald Sussman
- 1979 David Marr
- 1977 Douglas Lenat
- 1975 Chuck Rieger
- 1973 Patrick Winston
- 1971 Terry Winograd
John McCarthy Award
2026 recipient
John A. Paulson Dean George F. Colony Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University
Professor Parkes is recognized for his foundational contributions to the interface of AI and economics, specifically for pioneering algorithmic mechanisms that ensure efficiency, fairness, and incentive alignment in high-stakes multi-agent environments.
The IJCAI John McCarthy Award is intended to recognize established mid-career researchers, typically between fifteen to twenty-five years after obtaining their PhD, that have built up a major track record of research excellence in artificial intelligence. Nominees of the award will have made significant contributions to the research agenda in their area and will have a first-rate profile of influential research results.
The award is named for John McCarthy (1927–2011), who is widely recognized as one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence. As well as giving the discipline its name, McCarthy made fundamental contributions of lasting importance to computer science in general and artificial intelligence in particular, including time-sharing operating systems, the LISP programming languages, knowledge representation, common-sense reasoning, and the logicist paradigm in artificial intelligence.
The award was established with the full support and encouragement of the McCarthy family.
Past recipients (11)
- 2025 Cynthia Rudin
- 2024 David Blei
- 2023 Dieter Fox
- 2022 Michael L. Littman
- 2021 Tuomas Sandholm
- 2020 Daniela Rus
- 2019 Pedro Domingos
- 2018 Milind Tambe
- 2017 Dan Roth
- 2016 Moshe Tennenholtz
- 2015 Bart Selman
Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award
2026 recipient
CNRS Researcher and Professor at the University of Montpellier, France
Professor Bessiere is recognized for his substantial contributions, as well as his extensive service to the field of Artificial Intelligence throughout his career.
The IJCAI Distinguished Service Award was established in 1979 by the IJCAI Trustees to honor senior scientists in AI for contributions and service to the field during their careers.
Past recipients (24)
- 2025 Carles Sierra
- 2024 Maria Gini
- 2023 Qiang Yang
- 2022 Bernhard Nebel
- 2021 Steven Minton
- 2020 Toby Walsh
- 2019 Francesca Rossi
- 2018 Craig Knoblock
- 2017 Ramon Lopez de Mantaras
- 2016 Erik Sandewall
- 2015 Anthony G. Cohn
- 2013 Wolfgang Wahlster
- 2011 Raymond C. Perrault
- 2009 Luigia Carlucci Aiello
- 2007 Ronald J. Brachman
- 2005 Raj Reddy
- 2003 Alan Bundy
- 2001 Barbara Grosz
- 1999 Wolfgang Bibel
- 1993 Daniel G. Bobrow
- 1991 Woodrow Bledsoe
- 1989 Donald Walker
- 1983 Arthur Samuel
- 1979 Bernard Meltzer
How the awards are selected
The IJCAI-26 Award for Research Excellence, the John McCarthy Award and the Computers and Thought Award are awarded by the IJCAI Board of Trustees, upon recommendation by the IJCAI-26 Awards Selection Committee:
- Bo An, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Diego Calvanese, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
- James Kwok, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China
- Kate Larson, University of Waterloo, Canada
- Michael Thielscher, University of New South Wales, Australia
- Zhi-Hua Zhou, Nanjing University, China (Chair)
The Selection Committee receives advice from the IJCAI-26 Awards Review Committee, who comment on the accuracy of the nomination material and provide additional information about the nominees. The Review Committee is the union of the former Trustees of IJCAI, the IJCAI-26 Advisory Committee, the Program Chairs of the last three IJCAI conferences, and the past recipients of the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence and the IJCAI Distinguished Service Award, with nominees excluded.
