Call for PhD Papers

Goals

As a separate track of ICST, the PhD symposium has four goals: (1) to provide constructive feedback and guidance to doctoral students who are performing their dissertation research in the field of software testing, verification, and validation; (2) to help students aligning their research interests with the hottest topics of the scientific community; (3) to develop a supportive community of researchers and potential collaborators; (4) to help doctoral students interact with established researchers and practitioners in the field.

Process

Interested PhD students are invited to write a short research summary, to discuss with their supervisors in order to get their support for this submission to the PhD Symposium of ICST 2015, and eventually to submit their summary along with a letter from their supervisor. If the research summary is selected, then the PhD student will be invited to make a public presentation at the symposium. After the public presentation, the students will receive oral feedback from a panel of researchers and practitioners. The students may also seek advice regarding such things as completion of a PhD, career in research, networking, etc.

Scholarships

A limited number of free registrations will be available to PhD students. These scholarships will be given on a first-ask first-served principle.

Review Process

The organizers will apply a screening process based on the research summary and an advisor’s recommendation. The following criteria will be considered:

Quality of the research and of the summary Relevance of the research to software testing, verification and validation Strength of the recommendation Diversity of background, research topic, and approach Potential for practical benefits Stage of the research

What to submit

A research summary of at most two pages. Your summary must include: Student name, university or institution, research advisor, and title (to clarify: The student is the author of this document, and the advisor is acknowledged); The scientific and technical objectives and the problem to be addressed by the PhD, with a justification of its importance; The expected contributions of the PhD research, and its positioning in the state-of-the-art; Summary of results to date; An overview of the experimental/empirical evaluation of the proposed contributions

Format

The research summary must conform to the ICST 2015 Format and Submission Guidelines and must be a maximum of two pages with main text in 10point font, including all text, references, appendices, and figures. All submissions must be in English.

A letter of recommendation from one of the PhD advisors, which must include at least the name of the student, the name of all the advisors,a candid assessment of the current status of the student’s dissertation research, an expected date for dissertation submission.

The research summary and the letter must be submitted electronically in PDF, to the PhD symposium organizers with the subject: “ICST-2015 Doctoral Symposium Submission”. A single mail with the two items (research summary and recommendation letter) is preferred.

Organizers

  • Arnaud Gotlieb, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
  • Sudipto Ghosh, Colorado State University, USA

Presentations

Presentations will be 15 minutes and limited to 8 slides. Student presentations will be followed by 15 minutes of feedback from the pane members. The audience will be asked to hold questions until the end of each session.

Important Dates

  • Submission of papers: January 16th, 2015
  • Notification of acceptance: February 5th, 2015