Doctoral Colloquium

Overview

As a part of the latest in the highly successful series of International Conferences on Intelligent Environments, we will be hosting a Doctoral Colloquial at the 2014 conference in Shanghai, China in early July 2014. The aims of this Colloquium are both social and educational - to provide research students in the early to mid phases of their projects an opportunity to meet other people in a similar position, to make relatively informal presentations on their work, to discuss each other's experiences, ideas and findings, to make connections and to have fun !

If you have any suggestions as to what you would like included, or have any questions about the colloquium, then please email the colloquium chairs (contact details below).

Type of Publication

Key aspects of the Doctoral Colloquium are the presentations, either oral papers or as posters, where research students present, discuss and defend their work. PhD Students attending the Doctoral Colloquium may opt to submit a paper in either of the following formats:

Micro paper - Theses are a special concession for PhD students, to give them the opportunity and experience of submitting and presenting their work to an IEEE sponsored conference for a minimal cost (prices start at 1449 CNY -see IE'14 registration page). Micro papers are only available to PhD students attending the Doctoral Colloquium. Micro papers should consist of no more than two pages. The format for such papers is IEEE two column format that normally contains an: introduction (there is no need for an abstract), description of problem being solved, main findings to-date and future work plans. While we understand that early stage PhD work may not have developed mature theories or exhaustive experimental data, we do expect the paper will contain (and highlight) some original aspects (eg the hypothesis being explored, conceptual model, proposed methods etc).
Short paper - These are short versions (maximum of 4 pages) of regular papers and enable doctoral students to provide more detail than a micro paper but cost more (prices start at 3306 CNY -see IE'14 registration page). As such they are better for more mature PhD work. The advantage of submitting a short-paper to the Doctoral Colloquium, rather than a poster or regular short paper, is that you will be part of a track that is especially structured to provide support (advice) for students wrestling with PhDs and an opportunity to network with other students working in related areas.
Video - PhD students can submit a video of the work, accompanied with a micro (2 pages) or short (4 pages) paper at the above rates. For example a video with a micro paper would cost 1449 CNY or with a short paper for 3306 CNY. At the doctoral colloquim the video would be shown and the micro or short paper would be published in the proceedings. For the first (review) deadline, you should submit a micro or shart paper descibing the video, the core ideas and contribution. Your vdeo should not by emailed or submitted to the CMT, rather you should upload it to a server such as YouTube, and provide a link to it from the paper. Please clearly mark you paper as being a 'Video submission'.

Indexing and Publication

All micro and short papers accepted for the Doctoral Colloquium will be published by the IEEE and electronically available through IEEE Explore In addition, the conference will be submitted for review and indexing to EI Compendex and Thomson ISI. Papers should be written using the IEEE two-columne format; the author template can be downloaded from here.

Guide to Submittion

All presentations should be on research projects (PhD or similar), on topics appropriate to the Intelligent Environments theme (for further details on the range of themes, see http://intenv.org/ ) which are either (a) in a relatively early stage, but where the investigating student has already identified the nature and key aspects of the problem(s), and has ideas regarding how to solve them, or (b) is at a stage where interesting results are being produced, but the work is not yet quite at a stage appropriate to produce a long paper. As a minimum, papers should describe a research problem, explain why that problem is important and interesting, detail what the existing solutions (if any) or relevant methods are, including why these are not sufficient or satisfactory, and give some indication of the new solutions or methodologies the student is pursuing. There should be enough substance to offer and stimulate discussion, but the work does not need to be complete. Participants will also be expected to give short, informal presentations of their work during the Doctoral Colloquium track session on July 2014 at the main conference, to be followed by a discussion which is intended to help the students optimise their research strategies and develop their research and technical writing skills.

The main author of all contributions to the Doctoral Colloquium MUST be a student registered for a PhD or similar research degree.

Prize

IOS Press have kindly agreed to provide a certificate and a recent book published in the AISE book seriesfor the best doctoral contribution. The winner will be announced during the conference.

Key Dates

Submission of Full Paper - 28th February 2014
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection - 4th April 2014
Submission of Revised "Camera Ready" Full Paper - 9th May 2014
(conditional on acceptance of originally submitted paper)