The W. Wallace McDowell Award is awarded by the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding theoretical, design, educational, practical, or related innovative contributions that fall within the scope of Computer Society interest. This is the highest technical award made solely by the IEEE Computer Society where selection of the awardee is based on the "highest level of technical accomplishment and achievement". The IEEE Computer Society (with over 85000 members from every field of computing) is "dedicated to advancing the theory, practice, and application of computer and information processing technology." Another award considered to be the "most prestigious technical award in computing" is the A. M. Turing Award awarded by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This is popularly referred to as the "computer science's equivalent of the Nobel Prize". The W. Wallace McDowell Award is sometimes popularly referred to as the "IT Nobel".
