Join us for the 2025 Stibitz-Wilson Awards!
Established in 1997, ACRM’s Stibitz-Wilson Awards honor past and present innovators in the computational and biological sciences.
Friday, September 26, 2025
5pm - 7pm
The Ellen Theater, 17 West Main Street, Bozeman
FREE Admission!
Code for Tomorrow: Innovating for Classrooms, Communities, and Conservation
Join us on Friday, September 26 at 5pm at The Ellen Theatre for a FREE event in Downtown Bozeman—a night of celebration for some of the world’s brightest innovators. Doors open at 4pm, and admission is FREE!
This year, ACRM will honor two pioneers in computer vision, a usable privacy and security expert, a computer science educator and communicator, and an educational-software developer:
Serge Belongie and Pietro Perona are computer vision and machine learning innovators whose work on visual recognition and human-centered AI underpins the wildly popular Merlin Bird ID app.
Lorrie Cranor researches cybersecurity and privacy, focusing on user-friendly authentication, password security, and online privacy.
Yasmin Kafai champions designing and coding digital games and interactive media as groundbreaking learning modalities for children.
Mitchel Resnick develops creative learning tools like Scratch, helping children explore coding through hands-on experimentation.
Meet the 2025 Honorees:
Serge Belongie and Pietro Perona are leaders of the effort to build Visipedia, a network of people and machines that harvests and organizes visual information from expertly-curated data sets and makes it accessible to anyone anywhere. This “visual encyclopedia”underpins the wildly popular iNaturalist and Merlin Bird ID apps, which have been downloaded over 30 million times.
Lorrie Cranor is a leading researcher in both online privacy and usable privacy and security, and has co-authored over 200 research papers in these areas. Cranor has appeared on the Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN Financial News, NPR’s Morning Edition, Science Friday, and All Things Considered. Her TED talk on passwords has been viewed over 1.6 million times!
Yasmin Kafai develops tools, projects, and communities that foster coding, critical thinking, and creativity. Her current research explores algorithm auditing in machine learning applications. Additionally, through the nationwide Exploring Computer Science curriculum, she launched the use of electronic textiles to introduce computing, engineering, and machine learning in high school classrooms.
Mitchel Resnick is the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab, where he develops new technologies and activities to engage people (particularly children) in creative learning experiences. His Lifelong Kindergarten research group developed the Scratch programming software and online community, which is used by millions of young people around the world.
Thank you to our Sponsors!
The Stibitz-Wilson Awards are made possible by the generous support of our Sponsors.
SILICON SPONSORS
NORM ASBJORNSEN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
GOLD SPONSORS
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
OFFICE OF RESEARCH & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
COPPER SPONSORS
COLLEGE OF LETTERS & SCIENCE
HONORS COLLEGE
AND SPECIAL THANKS TO:
JTech COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
Gerry Ohrstrom
John and Kathryn Heminway
Yellowstone Public Radio
The Stibitz-Wilson Awards: A Celebration of Excellence
The Stibitz-Wilson Awards are named for inventor George Stibitz, whose work at Bell Labs in the 1930s helped set the stage for modern digital computing, and for biologist Edward O. Wilson, who made landmark contributions to our understanding of the complex web of life on Earth.
Watch the 2024 Awards Ceremony
Since 1997, the Stibitz-Wilson Awards have recognized insightful men and women whose work has powerfully impacted modern life. Learn about our previous honorees below.