For his leadership in the prior development and rapid deployment of the urban search and rescue robots used at the World Trade Center disaster.
ABOUT THIS AWARD
This award is to recognize an individual or a group who have made a significant contribution through the use of computing technology. It will be given once every two years, assuming that there are worthy recipients. The award amount is $5,000 plus travel expenses to the Awards banquet.
The award is intentionally defined broadly. The professional credentials of the recipient(s) are not important. The
recipient(s) need never to have earned a degree or published a paper, or even be considered to be a computer
professional. The emphasis of the Award Committee will be on the significance of the contribution itself, within the
prescribed areas of technology for humanitarian contributions in the field of computing.
Some examples of the types of contributions that this award is created to recognize are: application of computer technology to aid the disabled; making an educational contribution using computers or Computer Science in inner city schools; creative research concerning intellectual property issues; expansion of educational opportunities in Computer Science for women and underrepresented minorities; application of computers or computing techniques to
problems of developing countries.
Bartoschek, Schöning, named recipients of the 2012 Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics
Thomas Bartoschek and Johannes Schöning were recognized for contributions to "Geoinformatics at School" (GISchool). This program empowers students to design solutions to problems in their communities by bringing geographic information together with computing and human interaction technologies. Bartoschek, the initiative's founder, and Schöning, a computer-human interaction expert, introduced high-end technology into the classrooms of countries around the world to encourage young people to make a difference in solving problems that matter.
The project has established teacher workshops and a network of schools, teachers, and students that partner with public authorities and industry on projects like the use of GPS devices to map neighborhoods; inventories of local rooftops and their potential for solar energy development; collecting environmental data with DIY (do-it-yourself) sensors and microcontrollers or by developing smartphone applications. Bartoschek, a research associate and Ph.D. student, leads the GISchool Lab at the Institute for Geoinformatics (IFGI) of the University of Münster in Germany. Schöning is a professor of Computer Science at Hasselt University in Belgium, and a former student at IFGI.
