Doctoral SymposiumISSTA 2022

UPDATE: This year, the Doctoral Symposium will be offering presentations and panels to help students navigate their graduate school years.

The ISSTA 2022 Doctoral Symposium will bring together doctoral students working in the area of software testing and analysis and give them the opportunity to present and discuss their research goals, methods, and preliminary results in a constructive and international atmosphere.

The goals of the Doctoral Symposium are to:

• provide the participants independent and constructive feedback on their current research and future research directions;
• develop a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research;
• provide an opportunity for student participants to interact with established researchers and practitioners in the software engineering community.

Participating students will have the unique opportunity to describe their research ideas and receive comments and suggestions from experienced researchers in the software testing and analysis community.

The ISSTA Doctoral Symposium provides a forum for PhD students at any stage in their research to get detailed feedback and advice. The objectives of this event are to:

• Allow students to practice writing clearly and present their research effectively.
• Receive constructive feedback from experienced researchers and peers.
• Offer opportunities to form research collaborations.
• Interact with other researchers at ISSTA.

Format

The symposium is a full-day of interactive presentations. Each student will give a formal presentation followed by questions and discussions. Besides the formal presentations, there will be opportunities for informal interactions during breaks.

There are two distinct submission categories: junior and senior submissions. Junior students may not yet have developed a thesis topic. They will present their research ideas and any progress to date. Senior students are expected to give an outline of their thesis topic and will obtain feedback towards the successful completion of their thesis and defense.

Submissions are done through HotCRP: https://issta22-ds.hotcrp.com They are due on May 2, 2022, AOE.

All authors should use the official “2017 ACM Master article template”, which can be obtained from the ACM Proceedings Template pages. Latex users should use the “sigconf” option, as well as the “review” (to produce line numbers for easy reference by the reviewers) option. As supplemental material please submit a short statement by your thesis advisor stating that they are aware of your submission and that they will attend at least one rehearsal of your presentation prior to the symposium.

Junior PhD Students

Submit a 4 page research proposal with:

• a problem description
• a detailed sketch of a proposed approach
• related work

It is not necessary to present concrete results. Instead, try to inform the reader that you have a (well-motivated) problem and present a possible solution. Attempt to provide a clear road map detailing future research efforts.

Senior PhD Students

The experience for senior students is meant to mimic a “mini-defense” interview. Aside from the actual feedback, this helps the student gain familiarity with the style and mechanics of such an interview (advisors of student presenters will not be allowed in). The students should be able to present:

• the importance of the problem
• a clear research proposal
• some preliminary work and initial results
• an evaluation plan

Please submit a 6 page research statement in with the following:

1. Problem Description
   • What is the problem?
   • What is the significance of this problem?
   • Why can the current state of the art not solve this problem?
2. Goal Statement
   • What is the goal of your research?
   • What artifacts (tools, theories, methods) will be produced?
   • How do they address the stated problem?
3. Method
   • What experiments, prototypes, or studies need to be produced/executed?
   • What is the validation strategy? How will it show the goal was reached?
4. Preliminary work
   • Which research questions are investigated?
   • What are your initial results and findings?

This isn’t a technical paper, don’t focus on technical details, but rather on the research method.

Participation

Accepted students will give a 15 minute presentation followed by a period of time for questions, feedback and discussions.

Prior to the symposium, each student will be assigned submissions of two other students. For each submission the student is asked to prepare a short summary, feedback and 2-3 questions for discussions.