CCI’s Manuel Pérez-Quiñones recognized nationally for service in CS education
The 2025 Special Interest Group Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Award for Distinguished Service to the Computer Science Education Community has been awarded to UNC Charlotte’s Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, professor of software and information systems in the College of Computing and Informatics.
Since its establishment in 1997, this award from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) annually honors an individual with “a long history of volunteer service to the computer science education community” according to the industry leading computing association. This service, which is not limited to service to SIGCSE, may take many forms such as professional society leadership, conference organization, outreach efforts, editorial board participation, or other types of service to the computer science education community at any level of education. The award will be formally presented at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in February 2025.
“I have devoted my professional career to providing service to computing education through mentorship and advocacy for all people. It’s such an honor to have been recognized for this service,” said Pérez Quiñones. “I am also the first Latino to get this recognition — I hope that this will create greater visibility for the importance of mentorship and advocacy to our Hispanic and Latinx communities.”
Pérez Quiñones joined the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2015. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA) in March of 2024, and recently completed a rotation as Program Officer at the National Science Foundation in the Education and Workforce Cluster part of the Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering Directorate. He previously served on the faculty of Virginia Tech, the University of Puerto Rico-MayaGüez, and was a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and Northeastern University. He worked as a computer scientist at the federal Naval Research Lab in Washington D.C. while earning his D.Sc. in computer science from The George Washington University, after completing his B.A. and M.S. at Ball State University.
It’s a special honor for Pérez Quiñones, who has been involved with the SIGSCE organization since the early days of his academic career. “My first publication as a graduate student was in 1990 at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
“Now, SIGCSE is my professional home. It is truly an honor to be recognized by this community,” Pérez Quiñones said.