Doctoral Symposium Papers

Doctoral symposium provides an exciting environment for both beginning and mature PhD students. Beginning students have the opportunity to receive first-hand feedback on their research from experienced researchers as well as from their peers, enabling a critical review of their thesis work outside the safe environment of their research lab. At the same time, they will be required to read and critique the other participants’ work, since providing constructive feedback is almost as important for a researcher as receiving and acting on feedback.

The symposium also provides students who are about to finish their PhD or finished within the last two years a chance to showcase their work in front of the full IEEE CSMR-WCRE audience. Thus, they can not only disseminate their research results, but maybe also attract the attention of a research group looking for a new postdoc or of a department looking for a new faculty member! The submitted abstracts of this group of students will be published, and the best presentation (as voted by the audience) will be awarded the official IEEE CSMR-WCRE Best PhD Presentation (BPP) Award.

Finally, there will be a panel with senior experts in the field who will discuss any questions by the symposium participants about life as a PhD student and afterwards. This panel will be interactive, hence we need your input!

Both groups of students should submit a 4-page abstract of their PhD project or dissertation, which includes (at least):

a discussion about the technical problem addressed, its context and its importance;
the specific research hypothesis or questions;
an overview of related work;
a sketch of the research methodology and proposed solution;
a description of the adopted evaluation method and the results obtained so far;
the expected contributions of the PhD research;
[on a 5th page, which will not be published] at least three questions and issues that the student would like to have discussed, as well as the stage of the PhD work (beginning/mature).

Please submit this abstract by October 28, 2013 on the Easychair site (select “Doctoral Symposium” track): https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=satcsmr18wcre21.

We expect participants to come prepared to the venue so that they get the most out of the symposium. We will provide more detailed instructions later on, but people will at least be expected to read the abstracts of the other participants.

FAQ:

Will all abstracts be published?

No, only the abstracts of (almost) finished students will be published. The projects of those early in their PhD work are often still taking shape and thus hard to pin down in an abstract. In fact, the goal of the symposium is to help shape the research through expert and peer feedback.

Are all symposium participants eligible for the BPP award?

No, only (almost) finished students, for the same reason as above.

Can all conference participants attend the talks of the beginning PhD students?

No, to stimulate deep, honest, but possibly confrontational feedback without embarrassing anyone, these talks will only be open to the other symposium participants and the invited experts.

Can all conference participants attend the talks of the (almost) finished PhD students?

Yes, they will also be able to vote for the BPP award, and hire the presenters ;-)

For further details contact your doctoral symposium track chairs Bram Adams and Sibylle Schupp.