Doctoral SymposiumISSTA/ECOOP 2024

The ECOOP/ISSTA 2024 Doctoral Symposium will bring together doctoral students working in the area of software testing and analysis and give them the opportunity to present and discuss their research goals, methods, and preliminary 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 researchers in the software testing and analysis community.

Call for papers

The ISSTA/ECOOP Doctoral Symposium provides a forum for PhD students at any stage in their research to get detailed feedback and advice. The objectives of this event are to:

• Allow students to practice writing clearly and present their research effectively.
• Receive constructive feedback from experienced researchers and peers.
• Offer opportunities to form research collaborations.
• Interact with other researchers at ISSTA and ECOOP.

Submission Categories

There are three distinct submission categories: early Ph.D., late Ph.D, and job talks. The early Ph.D. submissions are for students who have not yet developed their dissertation topic and are seeking feedback on research progress to date. The late Ph.D. submissions are for students who have developed a thesis and are seeking feedback toward the successful completion of their thesis and defense. The job talk submissions are for students who plan to be on the job market in the upcoming academic year and are seeking feedback on their presentation and early exposure to the community.

Submissions for early PhD students:

• Please submit a two-page research proposal with:

  • A problem description
  • A sketch of a proposed approach.
  • Summary of relevant related work.

• Notes:

  • It is not necessary to present concrete results. Instead, try to inform the reader that you have a (well-motivated) problem and present a possible solution. Attempt to provide a clear road map detailing future research efforts.

Submissions for late PhD Students:

The goal for participants in this category is to mimic a mini thesis defense. The students should be able to present:

• The importance of the problem.
• A clear research outline.
• Some preliminary work and initial results.
• An evaluation plan.

Please submit a four-page research statement with the following:

• Problem Description

  • What is the problem?
  • What is the significance of this problem?
  • Why can the current state of the art not solve this problem?

• Goal Statement

  • What is the goal of your research?
  • What artifacts (tools, theories, methods) will be produced?
  • How do they address the stated problem?

• Method

  • What experiments, prototypes, or studies need to be produced/executed?
  • What is the validation strategy? How will it show the goal was reached?

• Preliminary work

  • Which research questions are investigated?
  • What are your initial results and findings?

Notes:

• This isn’t a technical paper, so don’t focus on technical details but rather on the research method.

Submissions for job talks:

Please submit a document with the following:

1. Biography: a brief (less than 500 words) biography of yourself. This should be written in the third person and be similar to the short bios used on academic websites or for speaker announcements.
2. Abstract: a brief (less than 500 words) summary of the job talk. This should be written in a style appropriate for a general computer science audience.

Paper Formatting

All authors should use the official “ACM Master article template”, which can be obtained from the ACM Proceedings Template page (https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template). Latex users should use the “sigconf” option, as well as the “review” option (to produce line numbers for easy reference by the reviewers) option. As supplemental material, please submit a signed short statement by your thesis advisor stating that they are aware of your submission and that they will attend at least one rehearsal of your presentation prior to the symposium.

Student Participation

Authors of submissions selected for participation will present their work during the Doctoral Symposium. Authors of early Ph.D. or late Ph.D. submissions may choose to publish their submission in a companion volume to the ISSTA and ECOOP 2024 Conference Proceedings.

The Doctoral Symposium will follow the general requirements and expectations for in-person participation as the main ISSTA and ECOOP technical tracks. This policy will be updated as more details are made available.