WORKSHOP: The Doctoral Colloquium at UbiComp 2011

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to support a doctoral research symposium (workshop) of approximately 10-15 promising doctoral students, along with 5 high profile faculty and industrial researchers. The event will take place in conjunction with and immediately preceding the 13th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2011), to be held September 17-21, in Beijing, China, and sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery. The annual UbiComp conference is the premier international forum for the presentation and discussion of cutting edge research relating to both the technical and applied aspects of ubiquitous computing technologies, systems and applications. This is an interdisciplinary field of research and development that utilizes and integrates pervasive, wireless, embedded, wearable and/or mobile technologies to bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds. Thus, the conference brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse areas that include human-computer interaction, pervasive computing, distributed and mobile computing, real world modeling, sensors and devices, middleware and systems, programming models and tools, and human-centric validation and experience characterization. More information about the conference may be found at http://www.ubicomp.org/ubicomp2011. The three goals of the full-day doctoral consortium are to increase the exposure and visibility of the participants' work within the community, to help establish a sense of community among this next generation of researchers, and to help foster their research efforts by providing highly constructive feedback and guidance from senior researchers in a supportive and interactive environment. To these ends, student participants will each make a formal presentation of their work to the group, with ample time allotted for questions and feedback from the faculty panel as well as from the other student participants. The feedback is geared to helping students understand and articulate how their work is positioned relative to other research, whether their topics are adequately focused for thesis research projects, whether their methods are correctly chosen and applied, and whether their results are appropriately analyzed and presented. Additional opportunities for more informal discussion and networking will be during the doctoral consortium's lunch and dinner events. The students will be invited to present their research to a wider audience through posters at the conference, and extended abstracts of their work will be included in the supplemental proceedings which are distributed to all conference attendees. Broader Impacts: The doctoral colloquium will help expand the participation of young researchers pursuing graduate studies in the various fields associated with ubiquitous computing, by providing them an opportunity to gain wider exposure in the community for their innovative work and to obtain feedback and guidance from senior members of the research community. It will further help foster a sense of community among these young researchers, by allowing them to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development. Several participants in past UbiComp doctoral consortia have since gone on to high profile research careers. The organizers of this year's event have committed to accept no more than one student from any given institution, and they will make special efforts to attract students who are diverse across a number of dimensions (e.g., research interests, gender and ethnicity), so that the participants' horizons are broadened to the future benefit of the field.