Doctoral Symposium

The Doctoral Symposium (DS) is a forum for doctoral students to share their work and ideas with fellow doctoral students and researchers in the field of multimedia systems. It aims to establish a supportive community of doctoral students working on multimedia systems, and promote interactions among students and researchers in the research community.

Participants of DS will get the chance to present their ongoing thesis work to the community at the MMSys main conference, and receive feedback and suggestions. If you are a PhD student who has some idea of what your PhD research will be but still got at least a year before the submission of your thesis, then this is a great time to benefit from the DS.

Take part in the DS by submitting a paper of up to four pages plus references by the submission deadline. The paper should include only the name and affiliation of the PhD student as a single author, and should follow the same format as MMSys regular submissions. The paper should clearly specify:

• A real-world problem that relates to and motivates the PhD
• The research problem(s) that the (proposed) PhD is addressing and how this fits into the bigger picture of other research that addresses the real-world problem
• The objectives and scope of the research
• The methods used to achieve the objectives and the proposed solution(s), including a brief description of the work done so far and a tentative plan for future work
• The main contribution(s) of the research to multimedia systems and a justification why the contribution will lead to a PhD If applicable, the first results, including an evaluation with respect to the state-of-the-art

Submissions will be peer-reviewed and accepted papers will be published in the ACM DL. Each accepted participant will be assigned two mentors who will be available for an in-depth discussion with the author as part of a dedicated session at the conference. In addition, the author will give a talk on the paper at MMSys. All submissions will be reviewed with respect to the overall quality of presentation, potential for future impact of the research on the field, and expected benefit to the other doctoral students attending the Doctoral Symposium.

In addition to the 4-page paper outlining the thesis research, authors are required to submit two additional documents:

• A letter of recommendation from the student's PhD advisor, verifying:
  • The student status of the applicant
  • Date of advancement to PhD candidacy
  • The expected date of thesis defense or graduation
• A statement summarizing the questions or aspects of the thesis work that they wish to get feedback from other researchers on (no more than one page)

All accepted DS papers must be registered at the conference. PhD students with accepted DS papers are eligible to apply for SIGMM travel grants, for which a separate application is required.