Based on a recommendation from the International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s (IACAP) Awards Committee, the executive board of IACAP has selected Professor Gualtiero Piccinini for the 2026 Covey Award. The Covey Award recognizes senior scholars with a substantial record of innovative research in the field of computing and philosophy broadly conceived.
Piccinini is Florence G. Kline Professor and Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri – Columbia. He received the IACAP Simon Award (2014), the American Philosophical Association Barwise Prize (2018), and the Chancellor’s Award for Research and Creativity from the University of Missouri – St. Louis (2019). He has been Visiting Professor at the Australian National University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, among others. His publications include Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account (OUP 2015), Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining Biological Cognition (OUP 2020), The Computational Theory of Mind (with Matteo Colombo, CUP 2023), and The Physical Signature of Computation: A Robust Mapping Account (with Neal G. Anderson, OUP 2024). He recently edited the volume Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind (Routledge, 2025).
Piccinini specializes in theories of computation, neuroscience, psychology and the human mind. While his 2015 mechanistic account of physical computation remains influential, his recent work makes a case for cognitive neuroscience developing a unified, integrated, multilevel, mechanistic, neurocomputational account of the mind.
The board recognizes the significant contributions Professor Piccinini has made to the scholarship on issues such as the nature of computation and cognition, and the philosophical relevance of cognitive neuroscience, as well as the importance of his sustained role in leading and organizing the philosophical community on these and other topics.
Professor Piccinini will present the Covey Award Keynote Address at IACAP 2026 conference at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 15-17 July. For more information see https://iacapconf.org/
Please join us at IACAP 2026 to congratulate Professor Piccinini on this well-deserved award.