General   One Scholarship each year, initial value of $3,000, now $6,000 every second year.

Background   This scholarship is sponsored by the Friends of Nick Cercone. The scholarship is named to honour the memory of the late Dr. Nick Cercone. In his capacity as a PhD student, Professor, Chair, Dean or Associate Vice-President across six Canadian universities, Nick Cercone made many significant contributions to several fields, including artificial intelligence, data mining, knowledge representation, and computational linguistics, with significant service to the computer science and engineering community.

Purpose   To recognize a computer science PhD student at a Canadian university who shows exceptional promise in making research contributions that will have real-world applications outside Computer Science. 

Eligibility and Basis of Selection   As determined by the Friends of Nick Cercone working with the Canadian Association of Computer Science / Association d'Informatique Canadienne (soon to be called CS-Can/Info-Can) and the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association / Association pour l'intelligence artificielle au Canada.

Payment   Payment will be made directly to the recipient's student bank account.

Certificate   A certificate will be presented to the scholarship recipient at an appropriate IEEE Canada function.

Dates and Location   The first scholarship was awarded in 2018, then 2020. Future awards will be made 2022, 2024, etc. with submissions due early in those years, actual dates may vary. Details and nomination instructions are here.