Aron Henriksson, PhD at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University.
Aron Henriksson, PhD at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University. Photo: Hans Bergman.

Aron Henriksson, PhD, is awarded the Börje Langefors Prize in 2016 with the following motivation:

"A well-focused topic selection in the borderland between Informatics, Language Technology and Computer Science. A well-written thesis rests on a solid theoretical foundation, with a clear application in Bioinformatics and articles with very high international exposure. "

In his thesis, Aron Henriksson investigates mathematical models of linguistic meaning that are derived from observations of word usage in large amounts of text, in particular how the semantic analysis can improve by combining models that capture different aspects of semantics. Development of this type of resource-efficient methods is important as it helps to alleviate the bottleneck of fully supervised approaches to natural language processing, that is, where manual annotations required for machine learning.

Aron Henriksson has conducted his research in “High-Performance Data Mining for Drug Effect Detection”, a project financed by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. The goal has been to develop methods for data-driven analysis of large amounts of health records. In the project, Aron Henriksson has primarily contributed with new techniques that allow for resource-efficient semantic analysis of a clinical text.

Click on the link to read about the project: High-Performance Data Mining for Drug Effect Detection

The Börje Langefors Prize

To honour Börje Langefors and to encourage continued good research in Informatics/ Information Systems, the Swedish Information Academy (SISA) decided in 2011 to annually award the Börje Langefors Prize for the best doctoral thesis in Informatics, Information Systems, Computer Science or equivalent subject areas during the year. The prize is a way for Swedish universities within SISA to unite around a common development and application of quality criteria for doctoral dissertations on the subject.

Click on the link to read more in Swedish on SISA's website

Börje Langefors - Sweden's first IT-professor and the founder of the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV)

Photo of Börje Langefors, founder of the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm Uni.
Professor Börje Langefors, founder of the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences.

Professor Emeritus Börje Langefors (1915-2009) was a pioneer of IT and creator of the subject Information Processing, particularly Administrative Data Processing (ADP), which later became Informatics.

He was the first professor of Information Systems in Sweden, and one of the first in the world, and highlighted the user's role in Electronic Data Processing (EDP).

Langefors helped to develop a new academic topic that integrated two areas: Infology and Computer Science, in which Langefors's contributions were many. He is also the father of the Swedish term for the computer, "dator".

Langefors was the first professor at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV) and also the founder of the department in 1966. At the department, he brought more than 20 doctoral students to graduation, most of whom are today professors, who in turn have brought their doctoral students to graduation. Langefors called them his "academic grandchildren".

Already in 1957, Langefors initiated that Saab developed one of Sweden's first computers, Sara. In 1963 he became an Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology for his work on strength calculations on aircrafts. Langefors was Professor of Information Systems, ADB, at the Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University (KTH) from 1966 to 1980. He received his professorship mainly for his work on the theory of analysis and development of Information Systems.

Langefors contributed strongly to place Sweden in the international IT map and in 1965 he became the Program Chairman at the IFIP Congress (International Federation for Information Processing). In 1977, he initiated the creation of IFIP Technical Committee TC8 (Information Systems) and became its chairman. In 1979 he was elected to become a member of the Academy of Engineering Sciences.

Langefors became an Honorary Doctor in Economics at Lund University 1975, an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Gothenburg in 1987, and an Honorary Doctor of Technology at KTH in 1989. In 1999 Langefors received the prestigious LEO, the prize for a "Life-Time Exceptional Achievement in Information Systems".

Click on the link to read more about the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences's history