Students & Mentors at the HCOMP 2014 Doctoral Consortium  

Doctoral Consortium

  • Call for Participation

HCOMP's annual Doctoral Consortium provides doctoral students with a unique opportunity to meet each other and experienced researchers in the field. Students will be mentored by a group of faculty who are leaders in the diverse specialties that make up the HCOMP field. The objectives of the Doctoral Consortium are to provide students with an opportunity:

  • to present and discuss their research with experienced researchers: the Doctoral Consortium Mentors
  • to establish a supportive community, including other doctoral students at a similar stage of their dissertation research
  • to provide a platform for broader exposure for their research, both in general and in support of future a job search

Areas of Interest. HCOMP is unique in the diversity of disciplines it draws upon, and contributes to, ranging from human-centered qualitative studies and HCI design, to computer science and artificial intelligence, economics and the social sciences, all the way to cultural heritage, digital humanities, ethics, and policy. For more information about HCOMP areas of interest, please refer to the main conference's Call for Papers.

Mentors. Senior HCOMP researchers regularly participate as mentors each year. Past mentors include: Jeff Bigham, Laura Dabbish, Elizabeth Gerber, Brent Hecht, Eric Horvitz, Lilly Irani, Henry Kautz, Matthew Lease, Siddarth Suri, Loren Terveen, Haoqi Zhang. A list of HCOMP 2016 DC mentors is forthcoming.

  • Eligibility

Status in Program: Applicants must be currently enrolled in a full-time PhD program and have written, or be close to completing, a thesis proposal (or equivalent). We will give preference to students who have proposed or are about to propose but are far enough from completing their thesis that the feedback they receive at the event can impact their work. Before submitting, students should discuss this criterion with their advisor or supervisor.

Attendance: Those accepted are required to attend the DC in person, and to present a poster on their work during the poster session at the main conference.

Selection: Submissions will be reviewed by a Program Committee of Doctoral Committee Mentors, with selection based upon the expected potential of both the student and their proposed work, as well as the expected benefit to the student from participation. Priority will be given to students whose research goes beyond locally available expertise at their home institutions.

  • Financial Support

Thanks to generous funding from the the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ), we expect to be able to support most expenses associated with attendance (e.g., airfare, one night of accommodation, conference registration, and meals on the day of the DC) for all accepted students. Additional details are forthcoming.

  • Application Document

Applicants must submit a solely-authored paper in English containing: 1) a Doctoral Research Overview; and 2) a Supplemental Paragraph.

Doctoral Research Overview: Please summarize your doctoral research, including the following sections:

  • Motivation for the proposed research
  • Background and related work (including key references)
  • Description of proposed research, including key research questions and planned methodology to be used for investigating these research questions
  • Proposed experiments if appropriate; Any preliminary evaluation and findings are welcomed, but this is not required.
  • Specific research issues and/or challenges (do not skip these; the consortium is about helping you solve issues!)

Supplemental Paragraph. Please write a paragraph explaining

  • Why you want to participate in the consortium at this point in your doctoral studies and how you expects to benefit from the consortium.
  • The status of your dissertation proposal (writing, submitted, presented, or approved).
  • Your expected (approximate) defense date.

Length and Organization: Your paper should be no more than 4 pages in total: 3 pages for the Doctoral Research Overview (including all figures and references), and the 4th page being the Supplemental Paragraph. The first page must contain the title of the paper, full author name, affiliation and contact details, an abstract of up to 250 words, and up to 3 keywords describing the research topic areas.

Formatting. Submissions must be formatted according to the conference's style guidelines. An Author Kit is available for getting started with LaTeX or Word. Please submit a single PDF file (embedding all required fonts). It is the responsibility of the student to ensure that their submissions uses no unusual formatting and are printable on a standard printer.

Submission. Papers should be submitted via EasyChair, selecting the Doctoral Consortium track.

Dissemination. Submissions will be distributed only to mentors and other attendees of the doctoral consortium. Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium will NOT be archived. As such, students may freely submit their research contributions for official publication in other venues. Participant names and university affiliations, as well as paper titles and abstracts, will be publicized on the conference website and in the conference program for the poster session.

  • Important Dates

  • August 19, 2016: Applications Due
  • August 26, 2016: Acceptance notification
  • September 2, 2016: Early Registration deadline
  • October 30, 2016: Doctoral Consortium
  • October 31 - November 2, 2016: Main Conference
  • Location

The Doctoral Consortium will be held at the School of Information (rather than the conference hotel), on campus at the University of Texas at Austin. See location & directions.

  • Past HCOMP Doctoral Consortia

Doctoral Consortium Co-Chairs

Edith Law

University of Waterloo


Haoqi Zhang

Northwestern University


Doctoral Consortium Mentors

Name Affiliation
Jeff Bigham Carnegie Mellon University
James Howison University of Texas at Austin
Name Affiliation
Markus Krause ICSI, UC Berkeley
Andres Monroy-Hernandez Microsoft Research

Doctoral Consortium Sponsors