Based on work from the International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s (IACAP) Awards Committee, the executive board of IACAP has selected Tom F. Sterkenburg for the 2026 Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy, which specifically recognizes scholars at an early stage of their academic career whose research is likely to reshape debates at the nexus of Computing and Philosophy.
Tom Sterkenburg is Emmy Noether group leader at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP, LMU Munich) and the Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML). He works on the epistemological foundations of artificial intelligence, bringing together insights from the philosophy of science and the mathematics of machine learning. A particular interest of his is the theory of computation: for instance, in his PhD project, he critically evaluated the use of Kolmogorov complexity to ground a theory of universal prediction; and he later contributed to a computable version of the standard framework of PAC learning, solving an open problem announced at the Conference on Learning Theory (COLT). His current research project is concerned with the fundamental notion of inductive bias—the assumptions that allow a learning algorithm to learn.
Next year Sterkenburg will take up the position of assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method of the London School of Economics (LSE). Among his other achievements, Sterkenburg has previously received the Karl-Heinz Hoffmann Prize from the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
The board recognizes Dr. Sterkenburg’s deeply philosophical and technical contributions to the epistemology of machine learning such as his extensive work on the nature and implications of induction in computational methods. We eagerly anticipate the future impact of his scholarship on these and many other topics on computing and philosophy.
Tom Sterkenburg’s work will be featured at the Simon 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 Dr. Sterkenburg on this well-deserved award. Registration is still open at: https://tickets.iacapconf.org/