6th M I D D L E W A R E D O C T O R A L S Y M P O S I U M
Co-located with ACM/IFIP/USENIX 10th Middleware Conference
November 30, Urbana Champaign, Illinois, USA
http://middleware2009.cs.uiuc.edu/events/mds2009/

CALL FOR PAPERS
---------------

Following the success of the past symposiums in this series, MDS'09 aims
at providing doctoral students with opportunities to present their work
and obtain guidance from mentors as well as to provide contact to other
students at a similar stage in their careers. The mentors are
experienced reseachers from either academia or industry. The goal of the
symposium is to expose students to helpful criticism on their current
work and suggestions on possible future directions and focus. We
believe that a forum like this will allow doctoral students to interact
with experts in the middleware community, hence providing an exciting
environment in which to inspire next-generation researchers to
contribute to the development of middleware technologies.

Topics of interest to this symposium include, but are not limited to the
following:
* Platforms and architectures:
+ Middleware for Web services and Web-service composition
+ Middleware for cluster and grid computing
+ Peer-to-peer middleware solutions
+ Event-based, publish/subscribe, and message-oriented
middleware
+ Communication protocols and architectures
+ Middleware for pervasive/ubiquitous and mobile computing
+ Middleware for embedded systems and sensor networks
+ Middleware for multimedia applications
+ Service-oriented architectures
+ Reconfigurable, adaptable, and reflective middleware
approaches
* Systems issues:
+ Reliability, fault tolerance, and quality of service
+ Scalability of middleware: replication and caching
+ Systems management, including solutions for autonomic and
self-managing middleware
+ Middleware feedback control solutions for self-regulation
+ Real-time solutions for middleware platforms
+ Information assurance and security
+ Evaluation techniques for middleware solutions
+ Middleware solutions for (large scale) distributed databases
* Design principles and tools:
+ Formal methods and tools for designing, verifying, and
evaluating middleware
+ Model-driven architectures
+ Software engineering for middleware
+ Engineering principles and approaches for middleware
+ Novel development paradigms, APIs, and languages
+ Existing paradigms revisited: object models, aspect
orientation, etc.
+ On-the-fly management and configuration of middleware

Submission Gudelines
--------------------
Authors should be advanced enough in their doctoral studies to have a
specific research proposal and some preliminary results with enough time
remaining to benefit from the symposium experience. This would
typically, but not exclusively, be students who are approximately
one/two years from thesis completion. Each paper should clearly explain
(1) the research problem and its significance, (2) the related work and
its limitations, (3) the research approach (algorithms, prototypes,
empirical studies, etc.), (4) preliminary research findings, and (5)
plans for future research. Submitted papers must be original work in
English, must not exceed 6 pages, must strictly follow the ACM
conference proceedings format, and must be submitted in PDF through the
symposium's web site. Accepted papers will be published in the
Middleware 2009 conference companion CD and the ACM Digital Library.

Symposium Format
----------------
The symposium is a full-day event consisting of paper presentations and
informal discussions. Each participant is expected to participate in the
symposium for the entire day.

Each paper session is devoted to the presentation of papers belonging to
a common domain. Each presentation will end with a mini-panel between
the presenter, a mock thesis committee and the audience, led by the
session chair. In past years, this format has been found to lead to
lively and productive discussions, as well as constructive feedback on
the dissertation work.

Next to paper presentations, the symposium will strenghten the awareness
of key skills that are necessary to (1) successfully finish PhD research
and (2) create substantial added value in a further career (either in
industry or in academia).

The symposium will provide a forum to present and discuss the competence
portfolio that is expected by industry today. It is clear that typical
intellectual and academic competences are necessary but must be
complemented by communication, management and leadership skills.

Important Dates
---------------
* Abstract submission deadline: July 20, 2009
* Paper submission deadline: July 27, 2009
* Notification of acceptance: September 15, 2009
* Camera-ready version: October 1, 2009

Organizers
----------
* Symposium chair:
+ Peter Triantafillou, University of Patras, Greece

* Technical program committee:
+ Gustavo Alonso, ETH, Switzerland
+ Indranil Gupta, UIUC, USA
+ Arno Jacobsen, University of Toronto, Canada
+ Bettina Kemme, McGill University, Canada
+ Anne-Marie Kermarrec, INRIA, France
+ Nikos Ntarmos, University of Ioannina, Greece
+ Peter Pietzuch, Imperial College, UK
+ Evi Pitoura, University of Ioannina, Greece
+ Ant Rowstron, Microsoft Research, UK
+ Karsten Schwan, Georgia Tech, USA
+ Prashant Shenoy, UMass Amherst, USA
+ Nalini Venkatasubramanian, UC Irvine, USA
+ Spyros Voulgaris, Vrije University, Holland