PhD FORUM

Introduction and Objectives

The European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECMLPKDD) includes a PhD Forum on machine learning and knowledge discovery.

The purpose of this forum is to provide an environment specifically for junior PhD students to exchange ideas and experiences with peers in an interactive atmosphere and to get constructive feedback from senior researchers in data mining, machine learning, and related areas.

The focus of the discussion at the PhD Forum would be the work in progress of junior PhD students, with 1-3 years of research experience, towards their dissertation.

During the forum, senior researchers with experience in supervising and examining PhD students will be able to participate and provide feedback and advice to the participants.

It will be an excellent opportunity for developing person-to-person networks to the benefit of the PhD students in their future careers.


Tentative Schedule

• Lightning-talks session followed by poster session
• “Speed dating” with senior researchers
• Invited talk on “How to Survive and Enjoy PhD”
• “Experience sharing” talks by senior PhD students/recent graduates


Submission Information

The PhD Forum spans various topics of data mining, machine learning, and work in related fields such as databases, artificial intelligence, statistics, information retrieval, multimedia and the Web. Topics in specific domains such as bioinformatics and the more general science informatics are also encouraged. Participants with interdisciplinary work across the areas are particularly welcome.

The PhD forum is open for two types of submissions:

(1) Work-in-progress papers must contain a clear motivation and description of the problem identified. Yet, the discussion of related work, the approach, and the theoretical and/or empirical evaluation may still be incomplete (at most 10 pages in length).
Work-in-progress papers may include the following items:
• Motivation, problem description
• Background and related work (including key references)
• Novelty and significance relative to the state of the art
• Approach, data, methods and proposed experiments
• Results obtained and future work
Work-in-progress papers could have been published earlier at other conferences or workshops.
The purpose is to obtain technical feedback on topic and writing.

(2) PhD project plans, outlining a complete PhD research plan (at most 4 pages in length).
PhD project plans may include the following items:
• Motivation, description of the problem area
• Relevant related work (including related research areas and key references)
• Aims and objectives
• Approach, data, methods and possible evaluation strategies
The purpose is to obtain feedback regarding future plans.


Note that
- The only criterion for acceptance is that the submission is clearly structured and written in clear English language, and that it is of sufficient maturity to enable reviewers and the audience of the PhD forum to provide constructive feedback.

- Papers will not be formally published. However, unless the authors opt-out, they will be made publicly available through the conference website.

- Submissions will be reviewed by members of the PhD Forum Committee. Authors will be asked to suggest specific reviewers from the Committee from whom they would particularly like to receive feedback. Unless the reviewer objects, reviews will be open: all submissions must include all author names, and the identities of the reviewers will be disclosed to the authors.

- The primary purpose of the review process is to provide constructive feedback to the authors by senior researchers in the area. A secondary purpose is to ensure that the contributions satisfy the acceptance criterion.

- All accepted papers will be presented in a poster session, which includes a special “speed dating” session with senior researchers.

- The first author must be a PhD student or a Masters student with a concrete PhD research idea.

- The PhD student must register for the conference and be present at the poster session.

- Co-authors may include the research advisors, committee members, and other collaborators as needed.


Submission Instructions

The papers must be written in English and formatted according to the Springer LNAI guidelines.

Author instructions and style files can be downloaded at: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.

To submit, please go to the CMT submission system at https://cmt2.research.microsoft.com/ECMLPKDD2016/,
and select from the menu the PhD track.

Important Dates

Paper submission: June 15
Author notification: July 15
Camera-ready: August 5

PhD Forum: September 19 (tentative)

*All deadlines are at 11:59PM Pacific Daylight Time.


ECML/PKDD 2016 PhD Forum Chairs

Leman Akoglu (Stony Brook University)
Tijl De Bie (Ghent University)

Please email phd_chairs@ecmlpkdd2016.org for questions.