Awards

• The Institute of Computer Science recognised its staff for outstanding achievements in 2025
  • Scientist of the Year - Jaan Aru, Associate Professor in Computational Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence
  • Lecturer of the Year - Vitaly Skachek, Associate Professor in Theoretical Informatics
  • Pillar of the Year - Helen Jõesaar, Head of Industry Collaboration
  • IT Ambassador of the Year - Mirjam Paales, Junior Lecturer in Informatics
• The University of Tartu announced its teaching excellence ambassadors who develop their teaching based on evidence and support an open teaching culture that values learning.
  • Mirjam Paales, Junior Lecturer in Informatics
  • Raimond-Hendrik Tunnel, Lecturer of Computer Graphics
  • Piret Luik, Professor of Didactics of Informatics
• Professor of Information Systems Marlon Dumas has been awarded the University of Tartu Grand Medal.
• Senior IT Specialist Terje Vellemaa has been awarded the University of Tartu Badge of Distinction.
• Janno Siim, Lecturer in Cryptography, received the Young IT Scientist Award of the Cultural Foundation of the President of the Republic of Estonia.
• The Estonian Quality Agency for Education has awarded the Quality Label to two e-courses from the UT Institute of Computer Science:
  • Programming in C++, co-authored by members of the Institute of Computer Science and other contributors, including Assoc. Prof. emeritus Helle Hein, student Kerdo Kurs, and Program Manager Varmo Vene;
  • Introduction to Databases, authored by Prof. Piret Luik.
• Eduardo Brito, our industrial PhD student, won 2nd place in the Global Essay Competition at the 54th St. Gallen Symposium.

• The Institute of Computer Science recognised its staff for outstanding achievements in 2024
  • Scientist of the Year - Kairit Sirts, Associate Professor in Natural Language Processing
  • Lecturer of the Year - Jaan Janno, Teacher in Informatics
  • Thinker of the Year - Uku Raudvere, Scientific Programmer
  • Pillar of the Year - Natali Belinska, Coordinator.
• University of Tartu honorary decorations
  • Sven Aller, Junior Lecturer in Informatics
  • Jaan Aru, Associate Professor in Computational Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence
  • Fredrik Payman Milani, Associate Professor of Information Systems.
• Liisa Rätsep, Head of Applied Natural Language Processing, received the Young IT Scientist Award of the Cultural Foundation of the President of the Republic of Estonia.
• The University of Tartu language award 2024 is given to the translation engine Neurotõlge. Awardees from the Institute of Computer Science are Professor of Natural Language Processing Mark Fišel, Research Fellow in Natural Language Processing Lisa Yankovskaya, Junior Research Fellows in Natural Language Processing Dmytro Pashchenko, Hele-Andra Kuulmets and Taido Purason, Associate Professor in Natural Language Processing Heiki-Jaan Kaalep, Scientific Programmer Tarmo Vaino, Language Data and Content Creation Specialist Britt-Kathleen Mere, Programmer Aleksei Ivanov and Head of Applied Natural Language Processing Liisa Rätsep.
• Students from the Faculty of Science and Technology voted Jaan Janno, Lecturer of Informatics, as the best lecturer of the Institute of Computer Science.
• The e-course “Health Data Analytics” by Sulev Reisberg and Raivo Kolde received the E-course Quality Label from the Estonian Quality Agency for Education.
• In the “Cyber School of the Year” project, the University of Tartu was recognized as the best in the university category. The project is led by the IT company CTF Tech, which is also the main organizer of the “Telia Cyber Battle of Nordic-Baltics” competition.
• At the Estonian Research Council’s annual science communication conference, advocates of science were recognized. In the category “Popularization of Science and Technology through Print,” the grand prize went to the popular science book “Loovusest ja logelemisest” (On Creativity and Idling) by Jaan Aru, Associate Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence.
• Kristo Raun, Junior Research Fellow in Big Data, won third place in the “Successful Estonia” opinion contest with his article Teaching Estonian Companies to Fish (for Data).
• Henri Pokk, a master’s student in the program “Conversion Master in IT”, won the Three Rectors’ Scholarship competition. The scholarship is awarded jointly by the University of Tartu, the University of Latvia, and Vilnius University.

University of Tartu honorary decorations

• Jaak Vilo - University of Tartu Grand Medal

Recognition of outstanding achievements by the Institute of Computer Science in 2023

• Raimundas Matulevičius - Scientist of the Year
• Alo Peets - Lecturer of the Year
• Dmytro Fishman - Young Role Model of the Year
• Merlin Pastak - Pillar of the Year
• Helle Hein - Long-term contribution to IT education

• Dmytro Fishman - Laureate of the Young IT Scientist Award by the Cultural Foundation of the President of the Republic of Estonia.
• Alo Peets - a prize awarded by students to the best lecturer at the Institute of Computer Science.
• Natali Belinska - a letter of appreciation from the Dean for her long-standing good work in supporting lecturers and students.

Recognition by the Estonian Quality Agency for Education

• E-course of the year - “How Artificial Intelligence Can Support Healthcare”, Elena Sügis, Peter Van Ooijen, Daniel Pintos Dos Santos, Rosa Verhoeven, Michael Peter, Institute of Computer Science, University of Groningen, University of Copenhagen, Cologne University Hospital.
• E-course quality labels
  • “Multimedia” - Sven Aller, Lidia Feklistova, Ljubov Jaanuska, Tauno Palts, Maria Gaiduk, Tõnn Sikk, Institute of Computer Science.
  • “Software Product Management” - Fredrik Milani, Kateryna Kubrak, Institute of Computer Science.
  • “Creating websites for advanced learners” - Lidia Feklistova, Valeria Mikša, Institute of Computer Science.

• Jaan Aru is the laureate of the Estonian Academy of Sciences' annual award for his research on mapping the similarities and differences between natural and artificial intelligence.
• Lidia Feklistova was awarded 1st prize in the national competition for papers in education. Marina Lepp and Piret Luik received a letter of appreciation for supervising her doctoral thesis.
• Eduard Ševtšenko won the Research Prize in Real Economics, awarded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, for the article "Development of SCOR Database for Digitalisation of Supply Chain Customer Feedback Analysis".
• Dmitry Rozgonyuk, a Master's student in Data Science, was awarded a €5000 prize from the Peeter Tulviste Memorial Foundation.

• OLE ROHKEM, a network of student organisations in Tartu, recognised the Institute of Computer Science and awarded us the Partner of the Year Award.
• The Delta Centre was recognised in the “Heartfelt Euro Deed” competition and was elected among the top 30 projects. In total, there were 140 projects.

Institute of Computer Science awards 2021:

• On 12 November, the Estonian Research Council awarded Jaan Aru and Ülar Allas at its annual science communication conference. Jaan was awarded the top prize for the best science and technology populariser. Ülar was awarded the second prize for the popularisation of science and technology through the printed press for his series of papers "Viruses and Vaccines".
• On 29 October, the winners of the University of Tartu honorary decorations were announced. Marlon Dumas, Professor of Information Systems, was awarded the University of Tartu Medal. Ivar Koppel, Head of High Performance Computing Center Head of Centre and Head of IT Development; Raimundas Matulevičius, Professor of Information Security; Raul Vicente Zafra, Professor of Data Science; Hedi Peterson, Associate Professor of Bioinformatics; Heili Kase, Secretary and Alo Aasmäe, Master's student in Computer Science and programmer, were awarded the University of Tartu Badge of Distinction. Decoration “100 Semesters at the University of Tartu” was awarded to Vambola Leping.
• On February 23, Professor emeritus Mare Koit received the IV Class of the Order of the White Star from the President.
• At the Rapid Cyber CoRe cybersecurity exercise held on February 11, the University of Tartu team, which also consisted of the UT High Performance Computing Center employees, won seventh place.

Institute of Computer Science awards 2020:

• At the virtual UT Institute of Computer Science Winter Seminar, Mirjam Paales was chosen Lecturer of the Year, Kaur Alasoo the Researcher of the Year, Anneli Vainumäe Support Pillar of the Year and Tiit Roosmaa was praised for his long contribution to the promotion of IT education.
• In June, Satish Srirama received a Letter of Gratitude from the University of Tartu for his long-term contribution to the University.
• At the concert ceremony of the 102nd anniversary of the Republic of Estonia, for the first time, the Rector presented the decorations “100 semesters at the University of Tartu” to Jaan Ehasalu, Helle Heina, Jüri Kiho, Mare Koit, Tiina Lasni and Anne Villems. Piret Orav also received the Letter of Gratitude from the University of Tartu at the same event.
• Piret Luik, Reelika Suviste, Marina Lepp, Tauno Palts, Eno Tõnisson, Merilin Säde and Kaspar Papli won the first prize at the National Competition for Educational Research Papers in the category of published articles in foreign languages for the article „What motivates enrolment in programming MOOCs?” Piret Luik was also the co-author of the second prize-winning article "The impact of beliefs and knowledge on the integration of technology among teacher educators: A path analysis".
• The Faculty of Science and Technology Student Council choose Ahti Põder as the best lecturer of 2020 in the UT Institute of Computer Science. Janno Siim was also nominated.
• On March 11, Research Fellow of Bioinformatics Kaur Alasoo was awarded the Young IT Scientist Award.
• On March 11, the Ministry of Education and Research recognized the Best Language Acts of 2019. The main prize was awarded between the University of Tartu machine translation and Tallinn University of Technology speech recognition.

• At the Institute of Computer Science Christmas party 2019, the following awards were given. Prof. Dietmar Pfahl was named Scientist of the Year, Lecturer of the Year is Meelis Kull, Amnir Hadachi was awarded the friend of the entrepreneurship title and Support staff of the Year awards was given to Ülle Holm and Liivi Luik.
• On her 50th anniversary, Kadri Vider was awarded the University of Tartu Badge of Distinction.
• On November 7, IC PerMed recognised Sulev Reisberg's PhD thesis for Best Practice in Personalised Medicine.
• 06.11 our students Tarmo Pungas, Kaarel Vesilind, Carmen Akkermann and Joosep Näks won the world first 24-hour Wikipedia article competition.
• The University of Tartu study committee decided to give this year good teaching grant to Mirjam Paales and Raimond-Hendrik Tunnel.
• Heili Orav was awarded the University Of Tartu Badge Of Distinction for her work at the University of Tartu.
• On the 3rd of April, President Kersti Kaljulaid gave out the young scientist award to our Research Fellow in Computational Neuroscience Jaan Aru.

• Ljubov Jaanuska, Jaan Janno and Piret Luik were included in 10 best lecturers in the Science and Technology faculty for the 2018 University of Tartu lecturer of the year award. www.ut.ee
• On November 22, the Information Technology Foundation for Education (HITSA) and Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications (ITL) announced the Ustus Agur scholarship recipient. The scholarship was awarded to PhD student Dmytro Fishman from the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu. The topic of his thesis is "Data integration and mining in bioinformatics". www.hitsa.ee
• Three teams from University of Tartu participated in the Nordic Collegiate Programming Contest. In total there were 140 teams and team Double Cycle Cover(members: Oliver Nisumaa, Tähvend Uustalu,Martin Širokov) from University of Tartu accomplished 11th place. 15th place went to team deeply biconnected (members: Andres Undi and Rando Tõnso). Third team from University of Tartu received 103rd place (members: Valeh Farzaliyev, Turkhan Badalov and Nikita Trykunov) www.cs.ut.ee
• Marina Lepp received the good teaching grant 2018 by the UT academic affairs committee.
• Assoc Prof Vitaly Skackek’s talk was selected as the best talk in “Security and Channel Coding” area at the workshop “Professor’s Day” on May 28th 2018 organized by Huawei company in St. Petersburg, Russia .
• On 6th of April president Kersti Kaljulaid gave out the young scientist award and young IT-scientist special award. Leopold Parts received the young scientist award and Mark Fišel received the young IT-scientist special award. www.blog.cs.ut.ee
• Faculty of Science and Technology acknowledged its best lecturers. Best lecturers 2017 of the Institute of Computer Science are Eno Tõnisson, Marlon Dumas and Vambola Leping.

• Institute of Computer Science awards 2017:

For long-time contribution in promoting IT education: Anne Villems

Researcher of the Year: Hedi Peterson

Lecturer of the Year: Raimond-Hendrik Tunnel

Support staff of the Year: Ivar Koppel

• The best teaching staff nominated by the students of the Faculty:

Computer Science students: Mark Fišel

Conversion Master in IT students: Anne Villems

English curricula:

Software Engineering students: Marlon Dumas

Cybersecurity ( joint curriculum with TTU ) students: Arnis Paršovs

Computer Science students: Raul Vicente Zafra

• Computer Science Master's student Joonas Lõmps took part in an international conference at the end of January. The conference called "Multimedia, Scientific Information and Visualization for Information Systems and Metrics" was held in Spain and Joonas was awarded with the best research award for his work on visual computer recognition of Japanese handwritten hieroglyphs.
• Our Specialist for clerical procedures Natali Belinska was awarded with the UT badge of distinction.
• Prof Marlon Dumas was awarded with the best national research award in technical sciences for "Foundations of Process Mining".
• PhD Student Oleg Šelajev won the best paper award at the 12th International Conference on Software Technologies (ICSOFT 2017) for his paper "Using Runtime State Analysis to Decide Applicability of Dynamic Software Updates".
• Senior Researcher Fabrizio Maggi and Prof. Marlon Dumas won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Rules and Reasoning (RuleML+RR) for their paper "Semantic DMN: Formalizing Decision Models with Domain Knowledge".
• PhD student Ilya Verenich with his supervisor Marlon Dumas, won the best paper award at the International Conference on Software and System Processes (ICSSP 2017) for their paper "White-box prediction of process performance indicators via flow analysis"

Institute of Computer Science awards 2016:

• 14.12.2016 Institute of Computer Science awards 2016:
  For her longtime contributions to developing IT education: Tiina Lasn
  Researcher of the year: Dietmar Pfahl
  Lector of the year: Fredrik Payman Milani
  Support staff of the year: Mari Krusten

• 02.12.2016 the university recognized Assoc. Prof. in Software Systems Helle Hein as the programme director of the year. Included in the ten best teaching staff in the Faculty of Science and Technology were: Assistant in Informatics Kristjan Krips, Lecturer of Information Systems Fredrik Payman Milani, Lecturer in Informatics Eno Tõnisson.
• 23.11.2016 Senior Research Fellow in Computational Neuroscience Jaan Aru received an award for popularizing science for a series of articles in a popular-scientific magazine.
• 17.11.2016 PhD student Adriano Augusto and his supervisor Marlon Dumas, win the best paper award at the 35th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling for their paper: "Automated Discovery of Structured Process Models: Discover Structured versus Discover and Structure"
• 15.06.2016 Senior Researcher Fabrizio Maggi and Marlon Dumas win the Distinguished Paper Award at the 28th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering for their paper "Business Process Monitoring Framework with Hyperparameter Optimization.
• 14.11.2016 Jaak Vilo was awarded a small medal and a letter of appreciation from the rector of the University of Tartu.
• 22.10.2016 Student team VertexCover won 3rd place at the 10th international programming contest IEEE Xtreme, which is the best result ever achieved in the whole of Baltics. The team consisted of informatics bachelor student Oliver-Matis Lill and two mathematics bachelor students Andres Unt and Oliver Nisumaa. The team is also invited to participate in the regional North-Eastern European ACM programming competition taking place on 3.-4. December.
• Eno Tõnisson was elected as Teacher of the Year in the "Eestimaa õpib ja tänab" gala by the Ministry of Education and Research on Oct 8th, 2016.
• ICS students Ülari Laurson and Irene Teinemaa won the best paper award at BPM Conference.
• 12.09.2016 Estonian Ministry of Education and Research revealed the University of Tartu's informatics lecturer Eno Tõnisson as one of the nominees for the title Teacher of the Year.
• Computer science bachelor students won first place in this year's TransferWise hackathon with their co-working platform NomadCard. The team consisted of Janek Timmas, Rasmus Saks, Al William Tammsaarand Reino Zuppur.
• 14.04.2016 popular MOOC "Programmeerimisest maalähedaselt" received the "E-course of the year 2016" award. Author: Eno Tõnisson and co-authors: Marina Lepp, Tauno Palts, Reelika Suviste, Vello Vaherpuu, Kaspar Papli, Hanna-Liisa Reponen, Kaspar Hollo, Mari-Liis Jaansalu, Merilin Säde.
• In the list of the world's best universities by subject “QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016” that was published by the international consultation firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) on 22 March 2016, the University of Tartu is represented by two new subjects: Linguistics (101-150) and Computer Science and Information Systems (401-450)
• Informatics lecturer Eno Tõnisson received UT's Badge of Distinction on February 23
• Our Ph.D. student Tambet Matiisen with Tanel Pärnamaa came in 4th in the Kaggle Allen AI Science Challengeon February 16

• Lecturer of the Year: Helle Hein
• Researcher of the Year: Fabrizio Maria Maggi
• Award for long-term advancements in IT: Rein Prank
• Accomplisher of the year: Prof Varmo Vene

• Our students, Anti Ingel and Kaspar Märtens won the students' science competition held by the Estonian Academy of Sciences.
• Taavi Kotka was recognized as a laureate for "Silmapaistev Noor Eestlane 2015".
• The winner of Skype University Hackathon 2015 is TripMatch with our students Andriy Bondarenko, Ostap Maliuvanchuk, Yevhenii Sabanin and Rodion Kryuchkov. The team also won the People's choice award
• Awards from this year's BPM Conference (http://bpm2015.q-e.at/): our students Anna Leontyeva, Karl-Oskar Masing and Irene Teinemaa won the Business Process Intelligence Challenge (BPIC), while Senior Research Fellow of Software Engineering Fabrizio Maggi won best paper. Pictured below is Professor of Software Engineering Marlon Dumas who won the test of time award for a paper published at the conference in 2005.
• Based on the feedback in ÕIS students named Eno Tõnisson one of the best lecturers in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
• Dietmar Pfahl, Associate Professor in Software Engineering, has been elevated to the grade of Senior Member of the IEEE. Senior Member is the highest professional grade of the IEEE for which a member may apply. It requires experience, and reflects professional accomplishment and maturity.
• The Institute's Vice-Head Prof Varmo Vene received UT's Badge of Distinction on February 20.
• ICS alumni Kristo Käärmann (Transferwise) and Dan Bogdanov (Sharemind) received honorary decorations from the President of Estonia for services in the advancement of the business and IT sectors.

• Researcher of the Year: Raul Vicente Zafra
• Lecturer of the Year: assistant Tauno Palts
• Best employee of the Year: projects' coordinator Eva Pruusapuu
• Award for long-term advancements in IT: Prof Mare Koit

• Programme Manager of the Year - Marlon Dumas (Programme Manager of the Software Engineering Master's curriculum)
• Best lecturers of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science (in alpabetical order):
• Marlon Dumas - Professor of Software Engineering;
• Tauno Palts - Assistant in Didactic of Informatics;
• Eno Tõnisson - Lecturer of Informatics.
• November 24th - e-Estonia Council recognised the work implemented under the National Programme for Estonian Language Technology. valitsus.ee
• November 23rd - Konstantin Tretjakov won the 3rd place and TOP student award at TEXATA Big Data Analytics World Championship in Austin Texas. www.texata.com
• November 21st - The Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications awarded the Ustus Agur Scholarship to Riivo Talvise Computer Science PhD student at the University of Tartu. www.itl.ee
• November 20th - The authors of the mathematics text book "Matemaatika õhtuõpik" including Kristjan Korjus, won the GrandPrix in the category of "Popularising science and technology by means of printed media". www.etag.ee
• July 4th - Taavi Kotka was nominated as the best IT manager in Europe. majandus24.postimees.ee
• Rein Prank was awarded a medal and a letter of appreciation in acknowledgement of his work at the University of Tartu.
• May 15th - Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications recognised the work performed by companies and personnel who had in 2013 extensively influenced the Estonian ICT sector. Jaak Vilo, Head of the Institute of Computer Science, was nominated as the Person of the Year of 2013. e24.postimees.ee

• Institude of Computer Science awards 2013:
  • Researcher of the year: Luciano Garcia Banuelos
  • Lecturer of the year: Dominique Unruh
  • Best employee of the year: Martin Kaljula
  • Award for long-term advancements in IT: Ain Isotamm

• ICS Cryptography Group members were awarded for their research: Dan Bogdanov for his PhD thesis "Sharemind: programmable secure computations with practical applications " and Pille Pullonen for her master's thesis "Actively Secure Two-Party Computation: Efficient Beaver Triple Generation"
• Students of Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science chose Eno Tõnisson as the most humorous and favourite lecturer
• Based on student feedback, the best lecturers of 2013 in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science are Marlon Gerard Dumas Menjivar and Eno Tõnisson
• Rector Professor Volli Kalm acknowledges "Mathematical evening textbook" authors: Kristjan Korjus - PhD student in UT (informatics), Juhan Aru - PhD student in France (mathematics) and Elis Saar - master student in UT (semiotics) for initiative and innovative writing. They were given a letter of thanks and a scholarship.
• Gerhard Rägo medal was awarded to Härmel Nestra
• 28 August 2013. Luciano García-Bañuelos and Marlon Dumas received the best paper award at the 11th International Conference on Business Process Management held in Beijing, China, for their paper Slice, Mine and Dice: Complexity-Aware Automated Discovery of Business Process Models

• The Honorary Citizen of Tartu title was given to professor emeritus Ülo Kaasik
• The state decoration Order of the White Star 3rd class was awarded to Professor Jaak Vilo
• UT decoration of honour - Tiina Lasn.

• Institude of Computer Science awards 2012:
  • Lecturer of the year - Aivar Annamaa
  • Researcher of the year - Marlon Dumas
  • Positive person of the year - Raimundas Matulevicius
  • Accomplisher of the year - Kristjan Korjus

• According to student feedback, the best lecturers in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science are Aivar Annamaa and Eno Tõnisson.
• Institude of Computer Science was granted an award by University of Tartu for greatly furthering the quality of education. The event has a gallery and a video.

• Estonian Academy of Science chose Professor Jaak Vilo as its member in the division of informatics.
• UT decoration of honor - Vambola Leping
• UT decoration of honor - Ain Isotamm
• UT decoration of honour - Heiki-Jaan Kaalep
• UT atheltic member of staff - Ahti Peder
• EMT-Elion scholarship - Tauno Metsalu and Tiina Turban.
• UT decoration of honour - Ülle Holm

Institute of Computer Science:

• Lecturer of the year - Eno Tõnisson
• Researcher of the year - Satish Srirama
• Positive person of the year - Laura Kalda
• Accomplisher of the year - Margus Niitsoo

Best young scientist award from the president of Estonia professor Peeter Laud.

Ministry of Science and Education (ETIS , Archimedes)

• Main prize Leopold Parts (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Cambridge University, previously student of computer science at Tartu Unviversity, member of BIIT research group),
• II prize Meelis Kull (supervisor Jaak Vilo), Statistical enrichment analysis in algorithms for studying gene regulation.
• III prize Margus Niitsoo (supervisor Ahto Buldas), Black-box Oracle Separation Techniques with Applications in Time-stamping.

University of Tartu and Society of Mathematics of Estonia: Eno Tõnisson - for mathematics education.

MODELS'2011 Ten-Year Most Influential Paper Award - Marlon Dumas

2010

Ministry of Science and Education:

• Main prize - Jüri Reimandi (supervisor Jaak Vilo) Functional analysis of gene lists, networks and regulatory systems (doctoral theses)
• I prize - Kaur Alasoo (supervisors: Hedi Peterson and Phaedra Agius), Combining Support Vector Machines to Predict Novel Angiogenesis Genes (in bachelor theses)

Estonian Academy of Sciences, Best Bachelors Thesis Award - Kaur Alasoo (supervisors: Hedi Peterson and Phaedra Agius) for "Combining Support Vector Machines to Predict Novel Angiogenesis Genes"

IWSEC'2010 Best Paper Award - Margus Niitsoo, "Optimal Adversary Behavior for the Serial Model of Financial Attack Trees"

BPM'2010 Best Paper Award - Luciano García-Bañuelos and Marlon Dumas, "Structuring Acyclic Process Models"