Graeme Hirst, professor and associate chair, graduate studies, has been awarded the 2020 Distinguished Service Award from the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL).
The award recognizes an individual for extraordinary, extended service to the computational linguistics research community.
Hirst’s contributions to ACL have included 10 years serving as treasurer, managing the organization’s finances, including the finances of its conferences. “ACL's finances today are rock solid in large part thanks to Prof. Hirst's financial stewardship, and they are helping ACL weather what could have been a financially disastrous 2020,” notes ACL President Hinrich Schütze.
Hirst also served as book review editor of the Computational Linguistics journal from 1985 to 2014, and was elected a member of the Executive Board of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics in 2001, on which he served as chair and past chair.
Most recently, Hirst has been "instrumental” in the development of ACL’s Professional Conduct Committee, which Schütze highlights as “critical for making ACL a welcoming environment and ensuring equality and respect for everybody.”