Call for ACM SRC: Student Research Competition

MODELS 2021 will host an ACM Student Research Competition (SRC), sponsored by Microsoft Research. The ACM SRC is a forum for undergraduate and graduate students to showcase their research, exchange ideas, and improve their communication skills while competing for prizes at MODELS 2021. The Student Research Competition has the following goals (for general information on the ACM SRC see https://src.acm.org/about):

• To give undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to share their research ideas and results at MODELS in a special forum that provides visibility for their work
• To give students the opportunity to meet with and interact with MODELS attendees to share ideas, gain new insights, and understand possible practical applications
• To give students an opportunity to sharpen their communication skills, including visual, organizational, oral, and aural modalities
• To provide detailed feedback to students about their research and presentation, from a panel of distinguished judges
• To recognize and reward outstanding student research

Participants must be undergraduate or graduate students pursuing an academic degree at the time of initial submission. Participants must be current student members of the ACM, and must provide their ACM member number. Supervisors of the work may not be listed as co-authors; students must submit a single-authored version of their work for the competition.

The contest has two categories, one for undergraduate research and the other for graduate research. Three winners will be selected in each category. Research completed while the student was an undergraduate may be submitted to the undergraduate category even if the student is now a first-year graduate student.

Team projects will be accepted from Undergraduate students. One person should be designated by the team to attend the conference and make the oral presentation. This person along with another team member will be eligible for travel reimbursement for up to $500.00. Should the designated presenter win first, second or third place in competition only they will receive the medal and monetary award.

Only individual research is accepted from Graduate (Masters or PhD program) students; group research projects will not be considered. If an individual is part of a group research project and wants to participate in an SRC, they can only present their part of the research. Only they will receive the travel stipend and monetary award (should they win).

For works accepted to the MODELS 2021 Student Research Competition, a travel grant of up to US $500 will be awarded to help cover travel expenses to the conference (provided after the conference as a reimbursement request). Students may only participate in one SRC per program year (April 1- March 31). Students that have applied to an SRC, but have not been accepted, may respond to other SRC calls for participation during the program year.

Sponsors

We gratefully acknowledge Microsoft Research for their support of the ACM SRC.

Chair

Christos Tsigkanos, TU Vienna, Austria

Call for Participation

How to Participate

Step 1: Submit an Extended Research Abstract to this Track

To participate in the competition, students should submit an extended abstract of no more than 4 pages in PDF format adhering to the IEEE formatting instructions specified for the main conference track. Submissions that do not adhere to these limits or that violate the formatting guidelines will be desk-rejected without review.

Submissions should be related to the main themes of the conference (see the call for conference papers for a list of the conference topics). A submission should describe: research problem and motivation, background and related work, approach and uniqueness, results, and contributions. Papers will be judged based on how well they cover these aspects of the work. A panel of experts will review the submissions and select the students to participate in the second round of the Student Research Competition, which will be held at MODELS 2021 in Fukuoka, Japan.

Students who are selected to participate in the second round of the MODELS 2021 Student Research Competition will be awarded a travel grant of up to US $500 to help cover travel expenses to the conference (provided after the conference as a reimbursement request).

Step 2: Second Round Competition – Present a Poster

The second round of the competition will take place in Fukuoka at the MODELS 2021 conference and will be a poster session. Students will be given the opportunity to present their research to conference attendees and leading experts in the software engineering field, including the SRC committee. Judges will review the posters and speak to participants about their research. The judges will evaluate the research (quality, novelty, and significance) and the presentation of the research (poster, discussion); some of the students will be selected to advance to the next round of the competition.

A subset of the SRC participants will be selected to continue in the third round of the competition by giving a short presentation of their research before a panel of judges in a special session at the conference. After each presentation, there will be a short question and answer session. Evaluations will be based on the presenter’s knowledge of his/her research area, contribution of the research, and the quality of the presentation. Three winners will be chosen in each category, undergraduate and graduate, and receive prizes.

Final Step: MODELS 2020 Awardees Participate in SRC Grand Finals

The first-place winners in both categories (undergraduate and graduate) from the SRC held at MODELS 2021 will advance to the SRC Grand Finals. A different panel of judges will evaluate the winners of all SRCs held during the calendar year against each other via the web. Three undergraduates and three graduates will be chosen as the SRC Grand Finals winners. They are invited, along with their advisors, to the annual ACM Awards Banquet, where they receive formal recognition.

Prizes and Student Support Information

The top three undergraduate and graduate winners receive prizes of $500, $300, and $200, respectively (USD), an award medal, and a one-year complimentary ACM student membership with a subscription to ACM’s Digital Library. The top three graduate and undergraduate Grand Finalists receive an additional $500, $300, and $200 respectively along with a Grand Finalist certificate. They are invited to ACM’s annual Awards Banquet.

Important Dates:

Up to MODELS 2021

• June 12 July 2, 2021 ACM SRC submission (deadline extended)
• July 10 29 July 31, 2021 Notification to students
• Deadline is midnight for Anywhere on Earth (AoE, time zone UTC-12)

During MODELS 2021 (10 - 15 October 2021)

Exact dates to be announced

• Round 2 – ACM SRC Poster Session (as part of the MODELS 2021 poster session)
• Round 3 – ACM SRC Presentation Session
• ACM SRC Awards Ceremony (during some conference event, TBA)

Questions should be addressed to the chair http://dsg.tuwien.ac.at/staff/ctsigkanos/

Submission

Papers must be submitted electronically through the ACM SRC@MODELS 2021 submission web page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=srcmodels21