Doctoral SymposiumFSE 2026

Call for Papers

The FSE 2026 Doctoral Symposium will bring together doctoral students working in software engineering and allow them to present and discuss their research goals, methods, and results in a constructive and international atmosphere.

The goals of the Doctoral Symposium are to:

• Provide the participants with independent and constructive feedback on their current research and future research directions;

• Develop a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research;

• Provide an opportunity for student participants to interact with established researchers and practitioners in the software engineering community.

Participating students will have the unique opportunity to describe their research ideas and receive comments and suggestions from experienced software engineering researchers.

Important Dates

All dates are 23:59:59 AoE (UTC-12h).

• Submission deadline: February 5, 2026
• Notification: March 19, 2026
• Camera-Ready Version: April 2, 2026
• Doctoral symposium: during conference week

Submissions

To apply as a student participating in the Doctoral Symposium, you must prepare a research proposal. We distinguish two submission categories: Starting and In-Progress.

Starting Submissions

Starter submissions (two pages) are for students who have not yet developed their dissertation topic and are seeking feedback on research progress to date. Starting submissions should focus on:

• The research problem or area you are targeting and its importance to the field;
• A brief survey of the background and related work

In-Progress Submissions

In-Progress submissions (four pages) are for students who have developed a research proposal with first results and are seeking feedback toward the successful completion of their thesis and defense. In addition to the topics for starting submissions, in-progress submissions are also expected to contain:

• A description of the proposed approach;

• The expected contributions of the research;

• An evaluation plan for the stated contributions;

• Results achieved so far;

How to Prepare your Submission

At the time of submission, all papers must conform to the FSE 2026 Format and Submission Guidelines (https://conf.researchr.org/track/fse-2026/fse-2026-how-to-submit). Please follow the Companion proceedings (all other tracks), except that the submissions should not be anonymized, and must not exceed two pages (starting) or four pages (in-progress) including all text, references, and figures; submissions that do not comply with these requirements will be rejected by the chairs without review.

Your submission must be single-authored and include the title of your research, your name, your advisor (if you have one), your email address, and a short summary in the style of an abstract for a regular paper.

Starting and In-Progress submissions whose authors opt in for publication (see below) must be original work, not previously published, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere (see also ACM policy and procedures concerning plagiarism).

How to Submit

A submission consists of two documents in a single PDF file:

1. Your research proposal as described above, and whether you would like to opt in for publication.
2. A signed letter by your PhD advisor stating:
   • Your current status and progress towards a PhD;
   • That they are aware of your submission;
   • That they will attend at least one rehearsal of your presentation before the symposium.
   • PhD advisors who want to share confidential comments are welcome to email the chairs Cristian Cadar (c.cadar@imperial.ac.uk) and Gail Murphy (murphy@cs.ubc.ca).

Merge these two into a single PDF and submit it via the submission website (https://fse26-ds.hotcrp.com/). The PDF must be received by the submission deadline.

Evaluation

The Doctoral Symposium committee will select participants using the following criteria:

• Quality of the research proposal and its relevance FSE;

• Quality of the proposal presentation

Attending

All authors of accepted submissions must register for the FSE 2026 Doctoral Symposium and present their work as a poster and a lighting talk. Starting and In-Progress authors may also opt in to publish their submission in a companion volume to the FSE 2026 Conference Proceedings.

In addition, a subset of Starting and In-Progress authors will be invited to present their work in a short talk with discussion and feedback.