The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)'s Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (SIGSOFT) provides a forum for computing professionals from industry, government, and academia to examine principles, practices, and new research results in software engineering.
SIGSOFT was officially formed in 1976 as the Special Interest Committee on Software Engineering (SICSOFT) by Tony Wasserman and R. Stockton Gaines, and converted to SIGSOFT in 1977.
SIGSOFT focuses on issues related to all aspects of software development and maintenance, with emphasis on requirements, specification and design, software architecture, validation, verification, debugging, software safety, mining software repositories, software processes, software management, measurement, user interfaces, configuration management, software engineering environments, AI for software engineering, and CASE tools.
SIGSOFT publishes the informal bimonthly newsletter Software Engineering Notes (SEN) newsletter with papers, reports and other material related to the cost-effective, timely development and maintenance of high-quality software.
SIGSOFT History
The term "Software Engineering" was used as the theme of the first NATO Software Engineering Conference in 1968, recognizing the need for systematic approaches to software development. SIGSOFT was officially established in 1976, evolving from advocacy efforts
beginning in 1973. The organization has been instrumental in establishing the academic discipline
of software engineering and fostering the growth of the software engineering research community
worldwide.
Founding and early years (1975–1979)
1973: Tony Wasserman wrote to Peter J. Denning (then ACM President) advocating the formation of a dedicated ACM special interest group (initially framed around programming / programming methodology).
1975: Tony Wasserman and Stockton Gaines drafted a petition supporting an ACM Special Interest Committee on Software Engineering; an organizational meeting was held at the International Conference on Reliable Software in April in Los Angeles (≈80 attendees). This conference is often referred to as ICSE-0. Jean Sammet (ACM President) supported the formation of SICSOFT.
1976: SICSOFT was officially approved (often cited as SIGSOFT’s birth). Initial officers included Thomas B. Steel, Jr. (initial chair), Tony Wasserman (chair), Susan L. Gerhart (vice chair), Peter A. Freeman (secretary/treasurer), and Peter G. Neumann (newsletter editor). Major publications launched included SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (newsletter editor: Peter G. Neumann).
1977: Successful conversion from SICSOFT to SIGSOFT (effective July 1, 1977), approved by the ACM SIG/SIC Board.
1979: ICSE 1979 is noted as the first ICSE co-sponsored by SIGSOFT, chaired by Friedrich (Fritz) L. Bauer with program chairs Manny M. Lehman and Leon G. Stucki.
Building a conference ecosystem (1980s–1990s)
1980: SIGSOFT established formal guidelines for organizing both SIGSOFT symposia and ICSE conferences.
1981: The first SIGSOFT Software Engineering Symposium (Tool and Methodology Evaluation) was held (general chair William Riddle, program chair Victor Basili).
1986–1988: A testing-focused meeting lineage developed (including early workshops such as the 1978 testing workshop chaired by Ed Miller), and SIGSOFT expanded its conference footprint; TOSEM was approved by ACM in 1988.
1993: The first SIGSOFT FSE symposium was held (general chair Barry Boehm, program chair David Notkin), cementing FSE as a flagship SIGSOFT venue. It has been established as a continuation of the series of ACM SIGSOFT Symposia on Software Development Environments (SDE), which were held from 1984-1992 and were co-sponsored with SIGPLAN initially.
1995: SIGSOFT established the Conference Attendance Program for Students (CAPS) to support student travel and participation.
1999: Alexander L. Wolf (ACM SIGSOFT Chair), Mehdi Jazayeri (ESEC Steering Committee Chair), Patricia Ryan (ACM Chief Operating Officer), and Roger Johnson (President of Council of European Professional Informatics Societies) signed a Joint Sponsorship Agreement that established the ESEC-FSE series.
Modernization and growth (2000s–2020s)
2001: The SIGSOFT Impact Project started during the 2001–2005 executive committee led by Alexander L. Wolf (chair) and Mary Jean Harrold (vice chair).
The original SIGSOFT logo first appeared in 2008.
2008: The original SIGSOFT logo first appeared in 2008. It was replaced in January 2019 with the current logo.
2009: Revised SIGSOFT bylaws were approved (including longer leadership terms and increased at-large representation). Leadership at the time included David S. Rosenblum (chair) and Matthew B. Dwyer (vice chair), with Will Tracz as newsletter editor and Tao Xie as history liaison.
2015: Matt Dwyer (EiC of IEEE TSE) and David S. Rosenblum (EiC of ACM TOSEM) launched the journal-first initiative for software engineering at ICSE 2015 in May in Florence.
2010s–2020s: SIGSOFT continued stewarding and co-sponsoring major venues such as ICSE, FSE/ESEC-FSE, and ISSTA, reflecting the field’s global growth (e.g., ICSE leadership included chairs such as Martin Glinz for ICSE 2012 in Zürich and David Notkin for ICSE 2013).
International Conference on Software and System Processes
2007
Active
2007
MODELS
International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems
1998
Active
1998
SPLC
International Systems and Software Product Line Conference
2000
Active
2000
SIGSOFT Awards
SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award
The SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award is presented annually to an individual or individuals who have made significant and lasting research contributions to the theory or practice of software engineering.
The SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award is presented annually to individuals who have contributed dedicated and important service to the software engineering community.
The SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award is presented annually to an educator or educators who have made significant contributions to, and impact on, the field of software engineering with his or her accomplishments as a teacher, mentor, researcher (in education or learning), author, and/or policy maker.
The SIGSOFT Early Career Award is presented to an individual or individuals who have made outstanding contributions in the area of software engineering as an early career investigator.
2017 – Christian Bird
2018 – Gabriele Bavota
2019 – Jeff Huang
2020 – Claire Le Goues
2021 – Lingming Zhang
2022 – Xin Xia
2023 – Chunyang Chen
2024 – Kevin Moran
2025 – Jie Zhang
2026 – Eunsuk Kang
2026 – Sen Chen
SIGSOFT Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award
The SIGSOFT Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award is presented annually to the authors of outstanding doctoral dissertations in the area of Software Engineering.
2012 – Mark Gabel
2013 – Jeff Huang
2014 – Nicolas Mangano
2015 – Muath Alkhalaf
2016 – Milos Gligoric
2017 – Srdan Krstic
2018 – Fan Long
2019 – Sergey Mechtaev
2020 – Rachel Tzoref-Brill
2021 – August Shi
2022 – Wing Lam
2023 – David Shriver
2024 – Bianca Trinkenreich
2025 – Elizabeth Dinella
2025 – Jialun Cao
2026 – Zhou Yang
SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award
The SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award is presented annually to the author(s) of a paper presented at a SIGSOFT-sponsored or co-sponsored conference held at least 11 years prior to the award year.
2008 – Rosenblum, D. S. and Wolf, A. L. A design framework for Internet-scale event observation and notification.
2009 – Andreas Zeller. Yesterday, my program worked. Today, it does not. Why?.
2010 – James C. Corbett, Matthew B. Dwyer, John Hatcliff, Shawn Laubach, Corina S. Pasareanu, Robby, and Hongjun Zheng. Bandera: Extracting finite-state models from Java source code.
2011 – Luca de Alfaro and Thomas A. Henzinger. Interface automata.
2012 – Chandrasekhar Boyapati, Sarfraz Khurshid, and Darko Marinov. Korat: Automated testing based on Java predicates.
2013 – Michael Ernst, Jake Cockrell, Bill Griswold, and David Notkin. Dynamically discovering likely program invariants to support program evolution.
2014 – Barbara Kitchenham, Tore Dybå, and Magne Jørgensen. Evidence-based software engineering.
2015 – James A. Jones, Mary Jean Harrold, and John Stasko. Visualization of test information to assist fault localization.
2016 – Daniel Jackson and Mandana Vaziri. Finding bugs with a constraint solver.
2017 – Roy T. Fielding and Richard N. Taylor. Principled design of the modern web architecture.
2018 – Lingxiao Jiang, Ghassan Misherghi, Zhendong Su, and Stéphane Glondu. DECKARD: Scalable and accurate tree-based detection of code clones.
2019 – Koushik Sen, Darko Marinov, and Gul Agha. CUTE: A concolic unit testing engine for C.
2020 – Willem Visser, Klaus Havelund, Guillaume Brat, and SeungJoon Park. Model checking programs.
2021 – Matthew B. Dwyer, George S. Avrunin, and James C. Corbett. Patterns of property specifications for finite-state verification.
2022 – Mik Kersten and Gail Murphy. Using task context to improve programmer productivity.
2023 – Gordon Fraser and Andrea Arcuri. EvoSuite: Automatic test suite generation for object-oriented software.
2024 – Marcel Bruch, Martin Monperrus, and Mira Mezini. Learning from examples to improve code completion systems.
2025 – Alberto Bacchelli and Christian Bird. Expectations, outcomes, and challenges of modern code review.
2026 – Jacek Śliwerski, Thomas Zimmermann, and Andreas Zeller. When do changes induce fixes?.
SIGSOFT - SIGBED Frank Anger Award
In the spirit of Frank’s work and legacy, the Executive Committees of SIGBED and SIGSOFT, with support from the US National Science Foundation, have established a student travel award in his name. The award provides $2000 stipends for two students, one named by each SIG, to cover travel expenses to attend the flagship conference of the other SIG. The award is meant to improve the mutual awareness of the two research communities to the opportunities and challenges emerging in complementary research areas.
2006 – Cesar Sanchez and Bernhard Egger (SIGBED)
2007 – Stefan Henkler and Chunyang Ye (SIGSOFT)
2008 – Basil Becker (SIGSOFT)
2008 – Georgios Fainekos (SIGBED)
2011 – Aldeida Aleti (SIGSOFT)
2011 – Miroslav Pajic (SIGBED)
2012 – Indranil Saha (SIGBED)
2013 – Reinhard Schneider (SIGSOFT)
2017 – Ivan Ruchkin (SIGSOFT)
2019 – Jacob Krüger (SIGSOFT)
2020 – Sumaya Almanee (SIGSOFT)
2020 – Adeola Bannis (SIGBED)
2021 – Sumaya Almanee (SIGSOFT)
2021 – Akshay Gadre (SIGBED)
2022 – Claudio Mandrioli (SIGBED)
2024 – Max Camillo Eisele (SIGSOFT)
2025 – Liu Wang (SIGSOFT)
2026 – Federico Formica (SIGSOFT)
SIGSOFT Software Engineering Academy
In 2026 this award was introduced and it honors and recognizes individuals who have made significant, cumulative
contributions to the development of the field of software engineering. Inductees to the SIGSOFT Software Engineering Academy are the principal leaders in software engineering, whose efforts have shaped the discipline and/or industry through significant research, innovation, and/or service.
Each year, a small cohort is elected to the SIGSOFT Software
Engineering Academy. Inductees is celebrated at the ICSE conference in their year of induction.
The award is appropriate for ACM because it will be an opportunity to recognize the software engineering community and its leaders who have shaped the field.
The SIGSOFT Software Engineering Academy is modelled after the SIGCHI, SIGIR, and
SIGGRAPH Academies and will follow a similar structure; however, it is focussed on a different research field with relatively little overlap to the SIGCHI, SIGIR, or SIGGRAPH communities.
