FIS2010: CALL FOR RESEARCH ABSTRACTS FOR DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM

[sorry for cross-posting]

3rd FUTURE INTERNET SYMPOSIUM 2010 - FIS2010
September 20-22, 2010 | Berlin, Germany
www.fis2010.org

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CALL FOR RESEARCH ABSTRACTS FOR DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM
http://www.fis2010.org/calls/doctoral-consortium

The doctoral consortium will bring together PhD students around the  
STI International research community, in order to present the latest  
progress in their doctoral research and open their newest ideas up to  
discussion. It will help the students concretize their research  
intentions and receive feedback on the soundness and completeness of  
their achieved work. Presenting their own work to a peer group also  
constitutes a good opportunity for them to practice the defense of  
their dissertation.

By contrast to similar initiatives usually co-located with scientific  
events in the field, such as the ESWC series, workshop participants  
will not only receive constructive comments with respect to topic- 
specific research issues; they will also be assisted in formulating a  
coherent research narrative of their doctoral work.  A set of  
guidelines, which have been designed to highlight the key  
methodological components required for a sound research narrative at  
various stages of the PhD work, can be used by the students to  
organize the content of their submission, and the associated  
presentation (see below).

The doctoral consortium will take place on September 23-24 (1.5 days)  
in Berlin, Germany and will be co-located with the 3rd Future Internet  
Symposium FIS2010. The first day will be covered by the presentations  
of the work of the students. The second (half) day of the event will  
be organized as a hands-on workshop on the topic of evaluation,  
including a detailed presentation of evaluation methodologies and  
techniques and hands-on exercises.

The event is open to all PhD students, independently of their  
affiliation to a STI International member organization. Participants,  
including authors of accepted papers, will be required to register to  
the event. STI International members will receive a discount on the  
registration fee (see below).  For submissions of similar quality,  
priority will be given to those originating from STI International  
members.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission of research abstracts: June, 25 2010

Completion of the reviewing process: July, 16 2010

Submission of presentations: September, 15 2010

Doctoral consortium: September, 23-24 2010



REGISTRATION FEES

Regular fee: 150 €

Discounted registration fee (STI International members): 100 €

SUBMISSIONS

The event is targeted at PhD students working on FIS2010-relevant  
topics, in particular at those students who are still in the process  
of defining the main research questions of their thesis, or starting  
to elaborate the answers to these questions.

The participants will be asked to submit a summary of their doctoral  
work which complies to the following template and explicitly answers  
the underlying questions.

1. Problem statement: this part should clearly provide answers to the  
following questions:

a. What are the core dimensions of the field of research in which the  
thesis is situated?

b. Which problems are still unsolved to date? Why do these areas need  
further exploration?

c. How could this gap be filled? Is the problem solvable at all?

d. Are these problems addressed in many previous approaches? Is it  
feasible to think that my thesis would greatly contribute to solving  
these problems? Is there room for improvement?

e. What are the critical success factors? How can these risks be  
minimized? What are the worst case strategies; the worst expectable  
outcome?

f. Are these problems addressed (possibly under a different name) in  
other communities and what are the results achieved in this context?

g. Is it a hot topic or is it becoming already obsolete?

h. What is the impact of a potential solution on the community?

i. Which are the application scenarios in which this problem is relevant

2. Main questions of the thesis: this part should clearly formulate  
the research questions the PhD aims to provide answers to, while  
positioning the work in a broader context and delimiting it from  
similar or related approaches.

a. What are the main research questions?

b. What is your unique selling point when comparing yourself with  
related approaches?

c. What issues that are relevant to your problem space you do not  
solve in your thesis?

d. What are the assumptions you make in your approach?

3. General approach: this part should give an overview of the work  
done (or planned to be done) in the thesis. It should define the  
research methods supporting the PhD research, sketch the path towards  
the achievement of the thesis objectives and specify the expected  
results. Relevant questions to be answered at this level are:

a. What are the methods you (intend to) apply in your research (design  
research, case studies, user interviews, statistical methods etc.)

b. What are the main actions which need to be carried on in order to  
achieve the desired results?

c.  What is the expected outcome? How does this outcome differ from  
related approaches (improve the performance of an algorithm, reduce  
the costs of a process, improve the usability of a method etc.)

4. Proposed solution: this part describes the approach to the research  
problem previously stated, outlining the results achieved so far and  
the things which still need to be realized.

5. Evaluation: in this section the paper should provide details on the  
evaluation methods, report on the evaluation results and discuss the  
implications of these results within and beyond the scope of this  
work. Relevant issues in this context are, for instance:

a. What methods do you use to validate your research?

b. What are the main target audience groups for your evaluation  
results? Who should be interested in the results of your research?

c. What are the results of the evaluation procedure?

d.  How well does your approach perform compared to related solutions?

e. Is there room for improvement? How could your solution be improved.

f. Do your results have implications beyond the scope of the thesis  
and which are these implications

6. Future work: issues which remain to be approached in the context of  
the thesis or beyond.

Your abstract will have a different focus depending on the phase of  
your PhD research (based on critical self-assessment):

• 1st phase: Find and formulate the research problem

• 2nd phase: Elaborate and evaluate the solution

• 3rd phase: Provide a summary of your thesis.

In the 1st phase, the focus will necessarily be on the definition of  
the problem statement. This implies that your research abstract should  
elaborate on bullets 1 and 2, while clarifying the research  
methodology as part of bullets 3 and sketching some preliminary ideas  
the prospected thesis will build upon (bullet 4). Further on, it is  
important that the student timely specifies the expected outcome of  
his PhD work (bullet 5).

In the 2nd phase the student elaborates the 4th and 5th bullets in  
addition to providing informative summaries of the previous ones. At  
this point it is essential that the student designs a suitable  
evaluation framework for the validation of his PhD research,  
critically analyzes the achieved results and compares them to related  
approaches (bullet 4).

Students in the final phase of their PhD could see the template above  
as a useful exercise for their upcoming defense.

Submissions should be formatted in Springer LNCS format and submitted  
as PDF documents. Every submission should clearly state the status  
(phase) of the PhD work and the name of the supervisor(s). The  
submissions should be sent per mail to Elena Simperl at elena.simperl@kit.edu 
  and Ruzica Piskac at ruzica.piskac@epfl.ch. The maximally allowed  
submission length depends on the phase of your PhD research:

• 1st phase: up to 5 pages

• 2nd phase: up to 10 pages

• 3rd phase: up to 15 pages

The submission should also include a cover letter in which the student  
elaborates on how the attendance of the doctoral consortium could help  
with their research. The cover letter should not exceed one page and  
be formatted using the same guidelines as the research abstract.

Each submission will be reviewed by at least one scientific advisor  
and by the education chairs based on the quality of the research  
abstract and of the cover letter attached. Accepted submissions will  
receive extensive mentoring by a scientific advisor during the  
doctoral consortium.

The proceedings of the doctoral consortium will be published at CEUR- 
online.

DAY 1: PRESENTATIONS

The participants will be required to present their work at the  
doctoral consortium The duration of the talks depends on the phase of  
the PhD thesis of each student:

• 1.phase: 10 minutes talk + 20 minutes discussion led by the  
scientific advisor

• 2.phase: 15 minutes talk + 25 minutes discussion led by the  
scientific advisor

• 3.phase: 20 minutes talk + 10 minutes discussion led by the  
scientific advisor

In order to ensure an efficient and effective event organization and  
participation, it is recommended that the students comply with these  
guidelines when designing their talks. We recommend the following  
template for organizing the slides so as to meet these goals, with  
suggestions for how much time to devote to each:

Phase I (5-8 slides, 10 minutes talk)

Problem statement 1-2 slides

Research questions and expected contributions 1 slide

General approach  1-2 slides

Work done so far 1-2 slides

Future work 1 slide



Phase II (8-11 slides, 15 minutes talk)

Problem statement 1-2 slides

Research questions and expected contributions 1 slide

Proposed solution 4-5 slides

Evaluation 1-2 slides

Future work 1 slide



Phase III (10-14 slides, 20 minutes talk)

Problem statement 1-2 slides

Contributions 1 slide

Proposed solution 5-7 slides

Evaluation 2-3 slides

Outlook 1 slide


Students will also have to submit their slides to the organizers prior  
to the doctoral consortium.

DAY 2: EVALUATION WORKSHOP

The second day of the doctoral consortium will be dedicated to the  
topic of evaluation, including a tutorial by a renowned scientist and  
hands-on exercises in which the students will apply what they learned  
during the tutorial and present the results to the audience.

Received on Thursday, 1 April 2010 14:22:49 UTC