Upsilon Pi Epsilon’s most prestigious award is the ABACUS Award, presented to an individual who has gained international renown in the profession, and over a period of several years has provided extensive support and leadership for student-related activities in the computing and information disciplines. UPE is pleased to announce that the 2009 Abacus Award will be presented to Dr. Eugene Spafford, Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University.

Dr. Spafford is renowned for his accomplishments as a senior advisor and consultant on issues of security and intelligence, education, cybercrime and computing policy to major companies, law enforcement organizations, academic and government agencies, and two Presidents of the United States. With nearly three decades of experience as a researcher and instructor, Professor Spafford has worked in software engineering, reliable distributed computing, host and network security, digital forensics, computing policy, and computing curriculum design. He is responsible for a number of “firsts” in several of these areas. He is currently on the advisory and editorial boards of numerous prestigious journals and has published over 100 papers and reports on his research.

He is a Fellow of the ACM, AAAS, IEEE and is a charter member of the IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core. Among his many honors and awards are the ACM President’s Award in 2007, the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award, the U.S. Air Force medal for “Meritorious Civilian Service,” and election to Upsilon Pi Epsilon!

More details about Prof. Spafford’s illustrious career may be found on his website.

The Abacus Award will be formally presented to Dr. Spafford at the 2009 Annual Convention of UPE. The 2009 UPE Annual Convention will be held on Friday, March 6, 2009 in conjunction with the ACM SIGCSE Annual Conference. Convention agenda will include a roll call of chapters, presentation from chapter representatives, announcement of UPE awards, and a special keynote speaker. Dr. Spafford will receive a UPE plaque, a $2,000 cash award and a specially inscribed abacus. He will also serve as the keynote speaker for the UPE Convention.