doctoral symposium

Goal

The goal of the Doctoral Symposium is to provide a supportive yet questioning setting in which PhD students can present their work, to provide an opportunity for students to attend ICSE, and to support the ICSE mission as a world-leading venue for software engineering research. Students will be able to discuss their goals, methods, and results at an early stage in their research. The Symposium aims to provide students with useful guidance and feedback on various aspects of their research from established researchers and the other student attendees.

Scope

The technical scope of the Symposium is that of ICSE. The Symposium enables Ph.D. students to interact with their peers at a similar stage in their careers and with established researchers in the broader software engineering community.

Students should consider participating in the Doctoral Symposium after they have settled on a dissertation topic with some initial research results. Students should be at least a year from completion of their dissertation (at the time of the Symposium), to obtain maximum benefit from participation. We invite students at different stages to submit to the Doctoral Symposium

• Students at an initial stage should show evidence that they are concretizing their research question and approach. These students will be asked to participate into exercises and discussions that enable them to think critically about their ideas. The abstract of this category is limited to two (2) pages.
• Students at a mature stage (third or fourth year) should have (or are going to) publish their first paper on a concrete research question and approach. These students will be asked to present a talk about their work and will get feedback. The abstract of this category is limited to four (4) pages.

Submission and Evaluation

How to Submit

Please read all of these instructions prior to submitting your paper.

To apply as a student participant in the Doctoral Symposium, you should prepare a submission package consisting of two parts, both of which must be submitted by 26 November 2009, 23:59.

Part 1: Research Abstract

Your research abstract must conform to the ICSE 2010 Format and Submission Guidelines. All submissions must be in English and made electronically through Cyberchair. Submissions must be in PDF format.

The research abstract should cover:

• The technical problem to be solved with a justification of its importance.
• An account of related and prior work explaining why this has not solved the problem.
• The research problem or question.
• A sketch of the proposed approach or solution.
• The expected contributions of your dissertation research.
• Progress in solving the stated problem.
• The methods you are using or will use to carry out your research
• A plan for evaluating your work and presenting credible evidence of your results to the research community.

Students at intial stage of their research might have some difficulty in addressing some of these areas, but should make the best attempt. The research abstract should include the title of your work, your name, email address, postal address, personal website, and a one paragraph short summary in the style of an abstract for a regular paper. Submissions should contain no proprietary or confidential material and should cite no proprietary or confidential publications.

Submissions that do not comply with the foregoing instructions will be desk rejected without review.

Research abstracts must be submitted electronically via the ICSE 2010 Format and Submission Guidelines page.

Part 2: Letter of Recommendation

Please ask your dissertation advisor for a letter of recommendation. This letter should include your name and a candid assessment of the current status of your dissertation research and an expected date for dissertation submission. The letter should be in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), and sent to: S.C. Cheung <sccheung@cse.ust.hk> and Matthew Dwyer <dwyer@cse.unl.edu> with the subject: DOCTORAL SYMPOSIUM RECOMMENDATION.

Review and Evaluation Criteria

Each prospective student participant will submit a package of materials (described above) for consideration by the Doctoral Symposium Committee. The Doctoral Symposium Committee will select participants using the following three criteria:

• The potential quality of the research and its relevance to software engineering.
• Quality of the research abstract.
• The stage of the research.
• Diversity of background, research topics and approaches.

Acceptance

Upon notification of acceptance, all authors of accepted research abstracts will be asked to complete a Copyright form and will receive further instructions for preparing their camera ready versions. Accepted research abstracts will appear in the ICSE 2008 Proceedings which will also be available electronically. All submitters will be expected to be able to meet the tight deadlines for camera-ready submissions and to present their work at the ICSE 2010 conference. Authors will be notified of acceptance by 14 January 2010.

Student Support

Important Dates

Doctoral Symposium Co-Chairs

Matthew Dwyer
University of Nebraska, USA

Shing-Chi Cheung
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

Doctoral Symposium Committee

Wolfgang Emmerich
University College London, UK

Paola Inverardi
Università dell'Aquila, Italy

Derrick Kourie
University of Pretoria, South Africa

Marian Petre
The Open University, UK

Margaret-Anne Storey
University of Victoria, Canada

Zhendong Su
University of California, Davis, USA