Thomas Zimmermann Recognized with Two SIGSOFT Awards

Thomas Zimmermann, Chancellor’s Professor and Donald Bren Professor of Information and Computer Science, has been recognized with two prestigious awards from the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (SIGSOFT), underscoring his long-standing contributions to the field.

Zimmermann received the SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award, which honors individuals who have provided exceptional and sustained service to the software engineering community. He was cited for “outstanding and transformative service to the software engineering community by broadening participation and championing open science and open access.” He was nominated by Lin Tan of Purdue University.

Reflecting on the honor, Zimmermann said, “Service has always been one of the most meaningful parts of my career. I’m grateful to everyone who has worked alongside me to make that possible.”

Zimmermann was also honored with the SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award for his influential MSR 2005 paper “When do changes induce fixes?” The award recognizes research that has had a sustained and significant influence on software engineering practice and research. The citation highlights the paper for “introducing the SZZ algorithm, a foundational technique that enabled a new generation of empirical studies, tools, and techniques for understanding and improving software quality.”

Speaking about the paper’s legacy, Zimmermann noted, “SZZ began as a simple idea to help us understand how bugs emerge in software projects. I never imagined it would become a standard tool for researchers and practitioners around the world.”

Zimmermann and his co-authors have been invited to deliver a retrospective talk on the paper at the Foundations Software Engineering (FSE) 2026 conference to be held in Montreal, Canada.

– Tonya Becerra