Studies in Second Language Acquisition and Cambridge University Press are very pleased to announce that the winner of the 2025 Susan Gass Award for Impact in Second Language Acquisition is Robert DeKeyser.

This award was designed to recognize the influence of SSLA’s longtime Editor and overall titan in the field of SLA, Susan Gass. Like Sue, Robert’s impact on the field can be seen on many levels. As noted in his nomination, and among many other influences that can be felt at the individual, disciplinary, and societal levels, Robert has made “ground-breaking theoretical and empirical contributions to cognitively-oriented SLA research, working on areas such as the study of implicit and explicit learning mechanisms, automatization processes, age effects, aptitude-treatment interaction, and study abroad.” That same nomination also noted that Robert’s brilliance, insights, and dedication have been a main inspiration even since entering the field, a sentiment I know many of us share.