2026 Kenichi Miura Award

Established in 2011 by Dr. Kenichi Miura, a distinguished alumnus of the department (MS ‘71, PhD ’73), this award honors a graduate student for outstanding accomplishments in High Performance Computing. At Illinois, Dr. Miura worked on the ILLIAC IV project. After graduation, he joined Fujitsu, eventually holding several key leadership positions in Fujitsu’s supercomputing and HPC groups. In 2003, he joined Japan’s National Institute of Informatics as a professor. Dr. Miura received the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award from the IEEE Computer Society in 2009 in recognition of his leadership in developing groundbreaking vector supercomputer hardware and software. Dr. Miura is a member of the Engineering Academy of Japan.

Eligibility: Applicants must be graduate students with demonstrated experience in High Performance Computing (HPC).

Required Materials:

- Unofficial transcripts for your current degree program at U of I. Unofficial transcripts can be obtained for free at: https://apps.uillinois.edu/selfservice/

- Up-to-date CV or resume.

- Two essays that answer the following (500 words maximum each):

1. What specific experience (conferences, courses, research) do you have with High Performance Work (HPC) work? (For example: Conferences such as SC, ISC, HPDC, or IPDPS, courses such as CS554 and CS533, etc.)
2. Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time. This does not need to be school-related and can mean more than just a title; you may describe taking the lead role in organizing an event or project or having explicit responsibilities to take care of a family member or others close to you. Please consider sharing what you accomplished and what you learned in your response.

If you are an online-only student located outside of the US, do not use Blackbaud to submit your application materials. Instead, please email all materials in PDF format to awardsinfo@cs.illinois.edu.