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Doctoral Consortium Call for Participation

Quick Facts

  • Submission: 9 October 2009 (5:00pm PDT)
  • Notification: 13 December 2009
  • Camera Ready: TBD January 2010
  • Submission Format: Single unanonymized document containing a four-page extended abstract in Extended Abstract format, CV, and one-paragraph statement of mutual benefits. A letter of recommendation from your advisor should be submitted separately by sending e-mail directly to the chairs at doc@chi2010.org.
  • At the Conference: Accepted submissions will be presented both at the Doctoral Consortium, which is a venue open only to participants, and as a poster at the conference. Please see the Information for the Poster Presenters.
  • Archives: Extended abstracts; DVD and ACM Digital Library

Message from the Doctoral Consortium Chairs

The CHI 2010 Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for Doctoral students to explore and develop their research interests in an interdisciplinary workshop, under the guidance of a panel of distinguished researchers. We invite students who feel they would benefit from this kind of feedback on their dissertation work to apply for this unique opportunity to share their work with students in a similar situation as well as senior researchers in the field. The strongest candidates will be those who have a clear idea and an area, and have made some progress, but who are not so far along that they can no longer make changes. Also, as well as stating how you will gain from acceptance, both you and your advisor should be clear on what you can contribute to the Doctoral Consortium.

Wendy A. Kellogg, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Gilbert Cockton, Northumbria University

Contact us: doc@chi2010.org

What is the Doctoral Consortium?

The Consortium has the following objectives:

  • Provide a supportive setting for feedback on students' current research and guidance on future research directions
  • Offer each student comments and fresh perspectives on their work from researchers and students outside their own institution
  • Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research
  • Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events

The Consortium will be held on Saturday and Sunday, April 10th and 11th 2010. About 15 doctoral students will be invited to participate. Applicants who are selected will receive complimentary conference registration, and a limited, partial reimbursement of travel, accommodation, and subsistence (i.e., food) expenses.

Preparing and Submitting your Doctoral Consortium Proposal

Current graduate students pursuing a PhD project who would benefit from detailed workshop discussions of their doctoral research should submit a single PDF file consisting of:

  1. A 4-page extended abstract of your thesis work in the Extended Abstract format. Clearly specifying:
    • Originality of the work with respect to current concepts and techniques
    • Importance of the work with respect to fundamental issues and themes in HCI
    • Results to date and their validity
    • Contribution of the work (expected and/or achieved) to HCI
  2. Your CV
  3. A one-paragraph statement of expected benefits of participation for both yourself and the other consortium participants (i.e., what will you contribute as well as gain).
  4. A letter of recommendation from the student's primary dissertation advisor, who should also state what you contribute as well as gain from the consortium, as well as why April 2010 would be timely in terms of the balance between the maturity of your research and the ability to take advantage of input from faculty and fellow consortium students. Where reference is made to institutional milestones in your PhD process, your advisor should write for an international committee and not assume that reviewers will have knowledge of the specific implications of having reached a specific stage. Advisors should be clear about the basis on which your research is well enough developed to benefit, but not so advanced that you cannot act on feedback from the consortium.

All materials except the recommendation letter should be posted (as a single PDF file) by 9th October 2009, 5:00 PM (1700) PST to the CHI 2010 Submission web site. Your file should be named lastname_dc.pdf, where lastname is your family name. The file must be no larger than 5 Mbytes in size.

The recommendation letter, as a text file, should be sent via email to doc@chi2010.org by 9th October 2009, 5:00 PM (1700) PST. Please ask your advisor to put "reference for" and your name in the e-mail subject line. Plain text recommendations are preferred. An email receipt of the letter will be sent to you and to your advisor.

Doctoral Consortium Review Process

In addition to quality of content, factors such as position within the doctoral process and institutional representation will be taken into account. We are unlikely to accept more than two students from the same institution. Attendees from previous CHI doctoral consortia should not apply, nor should attendees from doctoral consortia at major SIGCHI conferences such as CSCW or UIST. Candidates who have a developed idea but who still have time to be influenced by participation in the Consortium will receive the strongest consideration. Participants in the Consortium will be selected by the Doctoral Consortium Committee. Confidentiality of submissions is maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference.

Upon Acceptance of your Doctoral Consortium Proposal

Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection on 13 December 2009, or shortly after.

Authors of accepted submissions will receive instructions on how to submit publication-ready copy, and will receive information about attending the Doctoral symposium, about preparing your presentation and poster, about how to register for the conference at our cost, and about travel arrangements and reimbursement details. All such benefits are contingent on attending the two-day Doctoral Consortium. Please note that submissions will not be published without a signed form releasing publishing copyright to the ACM. Attaining permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people or proprietary content rests with the author, not the ACM or the CHI conference.

At the Conference

All participants are expected to attend all of both days of the Consortium, including a group dinner on the first day. Each student will present his or her work to the group with substantial time allowed for discussion and questions by participating researchers and other students. Although many fine pieces of work have to be rejected due to lack of space, being accepted into the Consortium is an honor, and involves a commitment to giving and receiving thoughtful commentary with an eye towards shaping the field and upcoming participants in the field.

Students will also present a poster of their work at the main conference. Please see the Information for the Poster Presenters.

Poster board panels vary from venue to venue, but typically you will have a space 4 feet by 4 feet square (1.2 x 1.2 metres). Posters will have to be printed portrait style and will be hung with molding clay.

After the Conference

Accepted Doctoral Consortium abstracts will be distributed in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts DVD. They will also be placed in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide.