SRC - Student Research CompetitionAPSEC 2023

Overview

APSEC 2023 will host a Student Research Competition (SRC), where undergraduate and graduate students can present their original research before a panel of judges and conference attendees. This year’s competition will consist of two rounds:

• Round 1, Extended abstract: All students are encouraged to submit an extended abstract outlining their research.
• Round 2, Poster at APSEC: Based on the abstracts, a panel of judges will select the most promising entrants to participate in a poster session at APSEC. In the poster session, students will be able to interact with APSEC attendees and judges.

Round 1: Extended Abstract

APSEC invites students to participate in the SRC in order to present their research and get feedback from prominent members of the software engineering research community. The scope of the proposed submission is software, broadly construed, including (but not limited to) theories, systems, and applications.

Submissions must be original research that is not already published at APSEC or another conference or journal. One of the goals of the SRC is to give students feedback on ongoing, unpublished work. Furthermore, the abstract must be authored solely by the student. If the work is collaborative with others and/or part of a larger group project, the abstract should make clear what the student’s role was and should focus on that portion of the work.

Guideline

Each submission (referred to as “abstract” below) should include the student author’s name and e-mail address; institutional affiliation; category (undergraduate or graduate); research title; and -the following sections:

• (No separate abstract)
• Section 1: “Context”
  What problem does the abstract try to solve and why is the problem important?
• Section 2: “Gap”
  What is the state-of-the-art in related areas, and how does the submitted work depart from others?
  It should also include sufficient background information and details of the presented approach to allow APSEC audiences to appreciate the presented work.
• Section 3: “Innovation”
  How the abstract solves the problem?
• Section 4: “Evaluation Plan”
  How you can evaluate the merit of your solution?
  What is the expected result?
  In SRC, we specifically focus on the evaluation plan (not the result) so that you don’t need to put the actual evaluation result.
  Further, the evaluation result is not going to be considered during the review.

All submissions must be in English and must come in A4 paper size PDF format and conform, at the time of submission, to the IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines (title in 24pt font and full text in 10pt font, LaTeX users must use \documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran} without including the compsoc or compsocconf option). Also, papers must comply with the IEEE Policy on Authorship. The extended abstract should be up to three pages. Reference lists do not count towards the three-page limit. You may write appendices after the three-page limit, but please be noted that the committee is not required to read them.

Submission

Submissions must be submitted electronically in PDF by Sep 15 to EasyChair.

Review

We will have two review cycles. For each submission, one of the following decisions will be made:

• Accept: abstracts that proceed to the next round unconditionally.
• Conditional Accept: abstracts that receive revision suggestions from the PC members.
  Authors will have about two weeks to revise the abstract accordingly and then resubmit.
  The revised abstracts will then be re-evaluated, and either accepted or rejected.
• Reject: abstracts that will not proceed to the next round.

The Chairs reserve the right to reject submissions (without reviews) that are not in compliance or out of scope for the conference.

Round 2: Poster

The poster session is scheduled on Dec 4 (the workshop day) and awards will be presented during the APSEC business meeting. Please bring your own poster of size A1 (594mm X 841mm). We’re not enforcing any requirements on the styles and contents except for the size, but we encourage students to use the same structure of the submitted extended abstract. Further, you’re allowed to put evaluation results on posters.

Important Dates

• Round 1 (Extended Abstract) Submission: Sep 15, 2023 (extended from Sep 1)
• Round 1 (Extended Abstract) Notification 1: Oct 4, 2023 (extended from Sep 20)
• Round 1 (Extended Abstract) Notification 2: Oct 13, 2023 (extended from Sep 29)
• Round 2 (Poster): Dec 4, 2023

Awards

The top three graduate and the top three undergraduate winners will receive awards at the APSEC banquet and their names will be posted on the APSEC website.

Travel Grant

The APSEC 2023 Organizing Committee is raising funds to support students advancing to SRC Round 2. The details will be decided and announced as soon as possible.

Eligibility

The SRC is open to both undergraduate (not in a Ph.D./master’s program) and graduate students (in a Ph.D./master’s program). Upon submission, entrants must be enrolled as a student at their universities.

Furthermore, there are some constraints on what kind of work may be submitted:

• Previously published work: Submissions should consist of original work (not yet accepted for publication). If the work is a continuation of previously published work, the submission should focus on the contribution over what has already been published. We encourage students to see this as an opportunity to get early feedback and exposure for the work they plan to submit to the next APSEC.
• Collaborative work: Graduate students are encouraged to submit work they have been conducting in collaboration with others, including advisors, internship mentors, or other students. However, graduate submissions are individual, so they must focus on the contributions of the student.
• Team submissions: Team projects will be only accepted from undergrads. One person should be designated by the team to make the oral presentation. If a graduate student is part of a group research project and wishes to participate in an SRC, they can submit and present their individual contribution to the group research project.

Round 1 Winners