Mira Castellanos
Creator of a widely used runtime
EST. 2028 / EVERY THREE YEARS
The Empyrean
Award
For the people who build the software everyone else builds on.
Apply for 2028
Applications open000d 00:00:00
Why this exists
Software runs the world now. Once every three years we stop, look at the work, and name the people who built the parts that hold everything else up.
20102013201620192022202520282031
Categories
Four categories · $50,000 each- 01
Web, App, and AI
Sites, apps, and AI, the whole product people actually use.
- 02
Security
Breaking it, then making it hard to break.
- 03
Open Source
Work you gave away that everyone now depends on.
- 04
Developer Tools
The things you keep open all day.
The Jury
Forty jurors, blind scoringTomas Whitfield
Principal engineer, distributed systems
Aisha Bello
Maintainer of a core tracing library
Jun Park
Built a compiler you have probably used
Eleanor Voss
Security researcher and exploit author
Rafael Ortiz
Design engineer, interface systems
Nadia Rahman
Database internals, twenty years of it
Soren Klein
Open source steward, package registries
Recent laureates
Past laureates2025
Edition 2025- Web, App, and AIHadi KobrossyWinner out of 287 projects · 14 nominations
- SecurityMei Lin ChenWinner out of 164 projects · 8 nominations
- Open SourceClara NilssonWinner out of 251 projects · 12 nominations
- Developer ToolsPrinaya FischerWinner out of 206 projects · 9 nominations