Goal and Scope

Note: The deadline for submission to the Doctoral Symposium has been extended to March 5, 2010!

The 2010 Doctoral Symposium provides a forum for both early and late-stage PhD students, working on foundations, techniques, methods and tools in the area of software process and product quality improvement, to present their research and get detailed feedback and advice. It will provide PhD students with an opportunity to present and to discuss their research with senior researchers in a constructive and friendly atmosphere. The main objectives of this event are to:

1. Provide a forum whereby students receive constructive feedback from other researchers on their research and guidance on future directions
2. Provide students with a forum for building a network of other PhD students as well as with more senior researchers
3. Assist PhD students to practice writing clearly and to effectively present their research proposal
4. Assist students in the selection of an adequate research methodology for their PhD work
5. Build bridges for potential research collaboration
6. Contribute to the PROFES 2010 conference goals

The Doctoral Symposium is intended for students who have not yet completed their dissertation research and do not expect to write up their dissertation before the conference. Each student will give a presentation of 20 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of questions and feedback. In addition to scientific matters, students will also receive feedback 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 PROFES conference (http://www.lero.ie/profes2010).

Chairs

Symposium Panel

Submissions and Evaluation

To participate, please submit:
Part 1: Research proposal (4 pages in PROFES submission format) submitted by email to Martin.Host@cs.lth.se. Be sure to include "PROFES Doctoral Symposium" in the subject line.

• Your name and contact information (you and dissertation advisor)
• Title describing your research
• Short abstract
• Research area and sub-area of your work
• What is the problem?
• What is the significance of this problem?
• Brief literature review, as well as current solutions/approaches
• Description of proposed research methodology
• Results achieved so far (if any)
• The expected contributions of your research

Part 2: Letter of Support (from your research advisor), submitted by email to Martin.Host@cs.lth.se
This letter should include an assessment of the current status of your dissertation research and an expected date for dissertation submission.

Review criteria

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

• Quality of the research proposal which includes a clear, concise statement of the research questions or problem and why it is important
• Discussion on what related work is already published, and how your research will add to that field
• Relevance to conference topics
• Quality of references used
• Quality of proposal presentation

Students at different stages in their PhD may address these issues in different ways.

Presentation and publication of research proposal

Students are expected to present their proposal during the Symposium. The 4-page proposal will be included in the second volume of the Conference Proceedings. Registration at the conference is required for the proposal to be printed in the Proceedings.

Important Dates