Atlanta, GA November 9-14

Important Dates for Doctoral Symposium

Deadline for submissions:	August 11, 2008
Notification of acceptance:	September 20, 2008
Symposium presentations:	November 10, 2008

Goal and Scope

The Doctoral Symposium aims to create a forum for PhD students working on foundations, techniques, methods, and tools in software engineering. This will provide participants with an opportunity to present and discuss their dissertation research with senior researchers in the software engineering community, in a constructive and friendly atmosphere.

Specifically, the symposium aims to:

Provide a setting whereby students receive feedback on their research and guidance on future directions from the Doctoral Symposium Panel that is composed of senior members of the software engineering research community
Foster the creation of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research, and
Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers at the main conference.

The Doctoral Symposium is intended for students who have not yet completed their dissertation research and do not expect to write their dissertation before the conference.

In addition to scientific matters, students will have the opportunity to seek advice on various aspects of completing a PhD and performing research as a young professional in software engineering.

The Doctoral Symposium has the same scope of technical topics as the main ACM SIGSOFT / FSE conference.

Submissions and Evaluation

To apply for participation at the symposium prepare a submission package consisting of the two parts listed below.

Part 1: Research proposal (4 pages in the ACM SIGSOFT / FSE format) submitted online at (link to be provided later) and including the following:

Your name and contact information (you and dissertation advisor)
Title of your research
Research area and sub-area of your work
Brief description of your research proposal indicating the problem addressed and approach taken (if defined) (25 words or less)
Description of the research problem and its importance in the field
Brief survey of background and related work, as well as current solutions/approaches
Description of the hypotheses that are being investigated
Detailed description of proposed methodology
Results achieved so far (if any)
Expected contributions of your research
Description of research evaluation methods and your plan to present evidence of contribution to knowledge in the research community

The above items are all required. However, they can be included in any order you find appropriate. Students at relatively early stages in their research will have some difficulty addressing all these areas in detail; this is understood.

Part 2: Letter of Support (from your research advisor), submitted by email to Nenad Medvidovic.

The letter must include your name and an assessment of the current status of your thesis research and stage in the doctoral program, as well as an expected date of dissertation completion.

Submissions will be reviewed by the Symposium Panel and selected for inclusion in the symposium on the following criteria:

Quality of the research proposal (research problem, hypotheses, and methodology)
Relevance to conference topics
Quality of proposal presentation
Diversity of background, research topic and approach
Stage of research (students will be selected across a range of research stages)

Doctoral Symposium Panel Members

Betty Cheng, Michigan State University
Prem Devanbu, University of California Davis
Elisabetta Di Nitto, Politechnico di Milano
Wolfgang Emmerich, University College London
Sebastian Uchitel, Imperial College London
Alex Orso, Georgia Tech
Adam Porter, University of Maryland
Barbara Ryder, Virginia Tech

Publication and Presentation

The conference proceedings is entirely electronic and will be made available to all participants.

Advisors of student presenters will not be allowed to attend their student's presentations.

Contact Information

Nenad Medvidovic
Computer Science Department
University of Southern California
neno@usc.edu