Announcement: Outstanding Contribution to Computing Education (OCCE) Award, 2024

ACM India is delighted to announce Prof. Meenakshi D'Souza of IIIT Bangalore as the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Computing Education (OCCE) award for 2024.

The ACM India OCCE Award recognizes individuals who have made fundamental, innovative and impactful contributions to computing education in India. The award carries a prize of ₹7 lakhs. Financial support for this award is provided by Microsoft Research India.

D'Souza is being recognized "for her exceptional contributions to computing education at multiple levels -- through online courses for software education, faculty development programmes, in the ACM India Teaching Partnership Program, in CSpathshala, and also via gender diversity initiatives".

D'Souza has made long-lasting contributions to the development and teaching of courses for a large and diverse body of students and professionals. Her signature course on Software Testing is offered not only at IIIT Bangalore, but also on NPTEL now on the Swayam platform, where thousands of learners have been certified. She has adapted this course for the BSc in Programming and Data Science offered online by IIT Madras. She has offered courses on further niche topics within this area in Faculty Development Programmes (FDPs) as well as training programs for government labs and corporate firms. These, along with a large spectrum of core courses (Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Discrete Mathematics and Computability, Theory of Computation, and Software Engineering) and electives (Software Testing, Automated Formal Verification, Graph Theory, Topics in Computability and Learning, and Logic in Computer Science) she regularly teaches (some of which she has created) at IIT Bangalore, have been received very positively by learners in her courses.

D'Souza is actively involved in programmes to improve the overall quality of undergraduate CS teaching, including teaching in numerous FDPs as well as in the Teaching Partnership Programme of ACM India. She has also contributed at the level of school education through her participation and involvement in the CSpathshala's Computational Thinking in Schools conference series, and has worked with many teachers of Computational Thinking through this initiative.

She has actively encouraged and enhanced the participation of women in computing, leading initiatives such as establishing industry scholarships for women students at the Masters level, and the ACM India Grad Cohort designed for women research scholars. Her mentorship and supervision have led to exceptional outcomes for women students from various institutions.

D'Souza is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIIT Bangalore, where she has been a faculty member since 2010. She received her Master's degree (in mathematics) from Madras Christian College and her PhD (in theoretical computer science) from IMSc, Chennai. She currently also serves as the President of ACM India Council.

Selection Process: The OCCE award recipient is chosen by a jury comprising eminent personalities in the computing community. The jury follows a rigorous process wherein each nomination is individually reviewed by all the committee members, then collated and deliberated upon in multiple evaluation rounds, and finally decided in the presence of a Steering Committee-appointed observer.

Please join us in congratulating Prof. Meenakshi D’Souza.