Goal

The goal of the Doctoral Symposium is to encourage PhD students in the field of software architecture to actively participate and contribute to the main conjoint conferences on software architecture.  Students will be able to present their research goal, methods and preliminary research results in this domain.  The Symposium aims to provide students with useful guidance and feedback for the successful completion of their dissertation from established scholars and other PhD attendees. The Symposium also helps participants to establish a new research and social network of their peers in the field of software architecture.

Scope

The technical scope of the Doctoral Symposium is that of WICSA/ECSA 2012. The list of the topics is in the WICSA/ECSA 2012 call for papers. Students should consider participating in the Doctoral Symposium after they have settled on a dissertation topic with some initial research results. Students should be at least a year from completion of their dissertation to obtain maximum benefit from participation. We invite students at different stages to submit to the Doctoral Symposium:

• Initial stage: Students should show evidence that they are concretizing their research question and approach. These students will be involved in discussions that enable them to think critically about their ideas and proposed research approaches. The submission of this category is limited to three (3) pages;
• Mature stage: Students should have published or be about to publish research papers on concrete research question and approach. These students will be asked to present a talk about their work and get feedback to further improve it from various aspects. The submission of this category is limited to six (6) pages.

Submission

To participate at the Doctoral Symposium,  students  should prepare a submission package consisting of two parts, a research abstract and a letter of recommendation.

Part 1: Research Abstract.  The research abstract must be in English and should cover the following aspects:

• The problem to be solved and its importance in the software architecture field;
• Previous work which has addressed similar problems explaining why they have not been previously solved;
• The proposed approach;
• The expected results;
• A plan for the evaluation of the results.

Part 2: Letter of Recommendation
The recommendation letter should be submitted directly by the advisors. The letter should include the submission number of the paper, the name of the candidate, the status of the dissertation research and an expected date for the dissertation submission.

Paper is submitted electronically in PDF to: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wicsaecsa2012 (select New Submission and Doctoral Symposium as the track) using the IEEE CS proceedings format.

Formatting Instructions: All submissions must be formatted according to the IEEE CS proceedings format (8.5″ x 11″ two-column format). Templates and instructions can be downloaded from the IEEE CS Press web site <http://www.computer.org/portal/site/cscps/index.jsp> at Information for Authors.

Selection Process

Submissions will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee using the following criteria:

• Technical quality of the submission, e.g., clarity, precision and adequacy of the problem statement, related work, self-contained solution description, expected results and their evaluation plan.
• Overall quality, including originality of the submission, novelty of the research approach, and relevance to WICSA/ECSA 2012.

Important Dates

Abstract and Letter of Recommendation Submission: May 10, 2012 (EXTENDED)
Notification of decision on papers: June 11, 2012
Camera-ready paper due: June 22, 2012
Doctoral Symposium: August 20, 2010

Doctoral Symposium Committee

Paris Avgeriou, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Muhammad Ali Barbar, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Rafael Capilla, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain
Jun Han, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Patricia Lago, VU Amsterdam, Netherlands
Rogerio de Lemos, University of Kent, UK
Anna Liu, NICTA, Australia
Johan Lilius, Åbo Academi University, Finland
Tomi Männistö, Aalto University, Finland
Dana Petcu, Western University of Timisoara, Romania
Dorina C. Petriu, Carleton University, Canada
Judith Stafford, Tufts University, USA

Doctoral Symposium Co-Chairs

For further information, please contact:
Mikkonen Tommi, tommi.mikkonen (at) tut.fi
Yan Liu, yan.liu (at) pnnl.gov