The Dahl-Nygaard Prize is awarded annually to a senior researcher with outstanding career contributions and a younger researcher who has demonstrated great potential. The senior prize is recognized as one of the most prestigious prizes in the area of software engineering.

We are very honoured that Prof. James Noble is the 2016 winner of the Senior Dahl-Nygaard prize. In what is undoubtedly a great scoop for VUW's Programming Languages Reading Group, James will be giving us an exclusive run of his award lecture ahead of the conference in July. The forward for the prize reads as follows:

"James Noble obtained his Ph.D. from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in 1996 where he is Professor of Computer Science. He is a Fellow of the Institute of IT Professionals New Zealand, a Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the British Computer Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He held a James Cook Research Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2015 and 2016. James is the founding Editor-In-Chief of the journal Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming (Springer). He was the PC Chair of ECOOP 2012.

James has a world-leading reputation for his work on object-orientation. He has published over 300 papers. He is notable for his pioneering work in programming language design, especially through his contributions to novel type systems such as ownership types and pluggable types. He has contributed to object-oriented and aspect-oriented approaches to software design, design patterns and the analysis of software corpus, software visualisation and visual languages, user interaction and agile development methodologies. His writing on the philosophy of computer science is thoughtful and thought-provoking.

James is also an energetic and tireless member of the programming languages community. The Grace language, of which he is co-designer, is designed to introduce beginners to object-oriented programming in the simplest possible way. His service to the community is exemplary and exhaustive, as a thorough and supportive thesis advisor, and as a member of numerous program committees."

Congratulations James! And we invite you all to join us for what will surely be a most stimulating and entertaining lecture ...