Dates
Note: All deadlines are 11:59PM (Apia Time) on the dates indicated. All submission deadlines are firm!

Check your local submission deadline with the World Clock.

27th October 2003 - deadline for submissions of proposals
15th December 2003 - notification
2nd February 2004 - abtracts due for conference proceedings
12th April 2004 - final summaries due

Goal

The Doctoral Symposium is a forum for Ph.D. students to publicly discuss their research goals, methods, and results at an early stage in their research. The Symposium aims to provide useful guidance for completion of the dissertation research and initiation of a research career.

Scope

The Symposium and ICSE provide an opportunity for student participants to interact with other students at a similar stage in their careers, established researchers, and the broader software engineering community.

Students should consider participating in the Doctoral Symposium at least six months before completion of their dissertations, but after having settled on a research area or dissertation topic.

Review Process

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

• The potential quality of the research and its relevance to software engineering.
• Quality of the research abstract.
• Stage of the research (students will be selected across a range of research stages).
• Diversity of background, research topic, and approach.

How to Submit

To apply as a student participant in the Doctoral Symposium, you should prepare a submission package consisting of the three parts listed below. Each part must be submitted electronically by the submission deadline.

Part 1: General Information

1. Name of student participant
2. Name of dissertation advisor
3. University and department
4. Full mailing address, including country and postal code
5. Telephone
6. Fax
7. Electronic mail address
8. Electronic mail address of dissertation advisor
9. Universal resource locator (URL), if available
10. Related submissions (e.g., if you are also submitting a technical paper to ICSE)
11. Brief description of research topic (25 words or less)
12. 2 to 5 keywords

This information should be submitted by email in plain ASCII, no markup, to the Doctoral Symposium Chair, André van der Hoek, at andre@ics.uci.edu with the subject line:

ICSE 2004 DS Application for <your name here>

Part 2: Research Abstract

The research abstract should be at a maximum 3 pages long, and must include:

• Your name.
• The title of your work.
• The research area or sub-area of your work (10 words or less).
• The technical problem to be solved. The importance of the problem should be justified.
• Justification that prior research has not solved the problem.
• The research hypothesis (claim).
• Details of the proposed solution.
• The expected contributions of your dissertation research. Progress in solving the stated problem should be the major contribution, but there may be others.
• The methods you are using or will use to carry out your research. It is important to describe a plan for evaluating your work and presenting credible evidence of your results to the research community.

Students at relatively early stages of their research will have some difficulty addressing some of these areas. Nonetheless, each prospective student participant should address them as well as possible.

The research abstact should be in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Formatting of the research abstract should follow the ICSE guidelines for regular papers.

The abtract should be submitted by email to andre@ics.uci.edu with the subject line:

ICSE 2004 DS Abstract for <your name here>

Part 3: Letter of Recommendation

Ask your dissertation advisor for a letter of recommendation. This letter should include a candid assessment of the current status of your dissertation research and an expected date for dissertation submission.

The letter should be submitted by email in plain ASCII, no markup, to andre@ics.uci.edu with the subject line:

ICSE 2004 DS Recommendation for <your name here>

Ground Rules

* All submitted materials must be in English.
* All materials must be submitted electronically in the formats specified above.
* Submissions should contain no proprietary or confidential material and should cite no proprietary or confidential publications.
* Permissions to use video, audio or pictures of identifiable people must be obtained in advance of the Symposium.

Accepted Submissions

Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent by e-mail. Final versions of research abstracts will be included in a Symposium Proceedings to be distributed to all participants. Participants selected for the Doctoral Symposium will later be asked to prepare a short description of their research for the published ICSE Proceedings. This description will be required to conform to the proceedings publication format.

Participants who present their work at the Symposium will be offered support in the form of complementary admission to the Symposium and to ICSE. Additional support may be provided depending on available resources.

Contact

André van der Hoek
School of Information and Computer Science
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3425 USA
Tel: (949) 824-6326
Fax: (949) 824-1715
Email: andre@ics.uci.edu

Program Committee

Jonathan Cook
New Mexico State University
jcook@cs.nmsu.edu

John Grundy
University of Auckland
john-g@cs.auckland.ac.nz

André van der Hoek (chair)
University of California, Irvine
andre@ics.uci.edu

Jeff Magee
Imperial College
jnm@doc.ic.ac.uk

Raffaela Mirandola
Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata"
mirandola@info.uniroma2.it

Mauro Pezzè
Università degli Studi di Milano - Bicocca
pezze@disco.unimib.it

Ita Richardson
University of Limerick
ita.richardson@ul.ie

Mary Shaw
Carnegie Mellon University
Mary.Shaw@cs.cmu.edu