Antonakakis received this award for his service to the IEEE S&P community over the last year. His service was primarily centered on reviewing more than 60 papers, being the shepherd for four of them, and providing high quality feedback based on peer review voting within the program committee membership. This feedback is shared with the authors of the papers that were not ready to be accepted by IEEE S&P. 

While reviewing as a service often does not offer any immediate benefits to the members of a program committee, high quality reviews are nevertheless an integral part in shaping the overall quality of published work in a research area over time. This process also assists young researchers in shaping their work for tier one venues like IEEE S&P.

Antonakakis is an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He leads the Astrolavos Lab, where he and his team conduct research in the areas of attack attribution, data mining, and network security. Over the last five years, Antonakakis has helped to raise over $40 million in research funding from various government funding agencies and the private sector. In 2018, he was honored with the Georgia Tech Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development Award.