Doctoral Consortium

The INTERACT 2009 Doctoral Consortium is a forum for PhD students to discuss their research goals, methods, and results at an early stage in their research. The Doctoral Consortium aims to provide useful guidance for completion of the dissertation research and the initiation of a research career in a friendly and constructive atmosphere.

The Doctoral Consortium will be held on 24 and 25 August 2009. The Consortium will be a closed event, open only to the selected participants and other invited attendees.

The Doctoral Consortium and INTERACT 2009 provide an opportunity for student participants to interact with other students at a similar stage in their research careers, established researchers, and the broader HCI community. PhD students who are currently working on their dissertation/thesis in an HCI related field are eligible to apply. Doctoral Consortium candidates should ideally have worked on their dissertation for at least 6 months. Thus, they should have chosen a research focus and possibly also have selected theoretical and methodological approaches and begun empirical work. To benefit from the Consortium students should have at least 6 -12 months of work remaining before the expected completion of their theses. The number of participants in the Consortium will be limited. Selection for the Consortium will be based on the quality of the submission and its relevance to HCI in a broad sense. The contribution the student may make to the Consortium, and the potential benefit of the Consortium to the student's research. Students selected to attend the Doctoral Consortium will be asked to present their work to get feedback for future directions. Consortium attendees are free to submit a paper or contribution to any of the other tracks at INTERACT 2009 on content similar to that in the proposal for the Doctoral Consortium.

Each prospective PhD student participant must submit a package of materials, consisting of 2 parts for consideration by the Doctoral Consortium Committee, no later than 30 March 2008. The first part must be submitted electronically using the conference submission system available through the official conference website. The second must be submitted via e-mail directly to one of the Doctoral Consortium Chairs.

Part 1: Extended Research Abstract

The research description should be at a maximum 4 pages long formatted according to the LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) format (see this page for a downloadable template), and must include:

  • The title of the work.
  • The student's name, university name, address and e-mail address.
  • Name and e-mail address of the dissertation advisor/supervisor.
  • The research area or sub-area of the work (10 words or less).
  • Related submissions (e.g., if the students is also submitting a paper to INTERACT 2009).
  • A brief description of the research topic (25 words or less).
  • A description of the research problem to be solved, why it is important and a justification that prior research has not solved the problem; or the research question at issue to be elaborated, why the issue is interesting and how your work will bring new knowledge to the question at issue.
  • The research hypothesis (claim).
  • The methods used or proposed to use to carry out your research. It is important to describe a plan for evaluating the work and presenting credible evidence of the results to the research community.
  • A sketch of the proposed solution.
  • The expected contributions of the PhD research.

The 4-page research abstract should be submitted in .PDF format and must conform to the LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) format (see above).

Part 2: Letter of Recommendation

Part 2 is a letter of recommendation from the student's PhD advisor/supervisor, or Head of School, or equivalent, supporting the student's nomination for the Consortium. This letter should include the student's name, a candid assessment of the current status of the PhD research and an expected date for dissertation submission. The letter should be in .PDF format, and must be e-mailed to one of the Doctoral Consortium chairs (kash at diku.dk, or, Else.Nygren at dis.uu.se).

The accepted 4-page Research Abstracts will be published in the special Doctoral Consortium proceedings and will only be distributed to participants of the Doctoral Consortium.

Please note: Students whose proposals are accepted for presentation at the doctoral will be offered support in the form of waived conference fees, but will have to fund their own travel and accommodation expenses.