VL/HCC ‘19 Graduate Consortium
Important Dates
Submission by e-mail: | 7 July 2019 - Deadline Extended! |
Notification of final decision: | 8 July 2019 |
Camera-ready deadline: | 12 July 2019 |
Consortium date: | 14 October 2019 |
Call for Participation
The primary goal of this year’s event is to stimulate graduate students’ and other researchers’ thinking about the design of programming languages, APIs, diagrams, models, and supporting tools that include and support diverse and underrepresented populations in computing. This goal aligns with the theme of the 2019 VL/HCC main conference.
Society has a clear need for broader participation in computing. One way to support broader populations in entering and remaining in computing is by ensuring that the design of computing systems supports all users.
Although there are many recent and ongoing efforts to support diversity in computing, there still remain many open questions about how to design computing systems that fully support all users.
The 2019 GC aims to encourage and advance research both on understanding the needs of underrepresented groups in computing and the design of computing systems that support these groups.
Why You Should Participate
- Present your work to a smaller, more attentive audience
- Get detailed, critical, constructive feedback from a diverse panel of experts
- Meet other students working on similar problems
- Travel funding to help cover your cost of attending VL/HCC
- NSF funding has been granted to support travel (details below).
Who Can Participate?
The consortium is open to both master’s and PhD students worldwide. Participation is particularly encouraged from PhD students who are close to proposing a thesis, as well as from members of groups identified by NSF as underrepresented in the sciences and engineering. If multiple applicants from a particular university apply for the consortium this year, then no more than two per university will be selected to participate. To be eligible, each applicant may have participated no more than once in the VL/HCC graduate consortia of past years.
Application Process
Email the following items with VLHCC19-GC in the subject line to Michelle Ichinco at Michelle_ichinco@uml.edu:
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A 2-page research abstract, formatted as a PDF in the standard IEEE Conference Proceedings format. NOTE: Accepted participants’ abstracts will be included in the conference proceedings. To make it easier for you to write a successful abstract, we provide examples from past years below.
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Your curriculum vitae (CV), as a second PDF file. This CV should mention whether you have previously participated in any graduate consortia at any conferences.
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A letter of recommendation sent directly by your thesis advisor. This letter should summarize your accomplishments and describe how far along you are in your master’s or PhD program, why attending the GC this year would be important for you, and please ask them to mention if you have already attended VL/HCC GC in any past year. In addition, if you are a member of a group designated by NSF as underrepresented, then the letter may mention this fact.
Selection Process
For one-third of the slots, students who have participated once before will be given priority. The remaining slots will be given to students who are new to the event. Each student from the returning group will be linked with new students in a mentoring arrangement. See Who Can Participate? above for additional selection criteria.
Posters
Selected students will be asked to present a poster on their work at the Showpieces Reception during the main conference. Details will be provided to accepted applicants.
Travel Support
We are happy to announce that we have received a grant from the National Science Foundation to support participation. This funding will cover:
- Travel to Memphis, TN, USA
- Registration to VL/HCC and the graduate consortium
- Shared lodging for both VL/HCC and the graduate consortium
- Meals
Note that we have a fixed budget for travel support. Based on our budget, we can cover at least up to $1,545 USD in the above travel expenses per student. Additional expenses may also be covered depending on the availability of funds.
Schedule
The consortium event will be a full day the Monday before the main conference. All participating students are expected to attend the main conference as well as the graduate consortium. Other conference attendees are invited to attend the consortium, to listen to the presentations, to interact with participants, and to give feedback to presenters. More details will be provided, closer to the event, including times and locations.
Examples of Successful Applications
To be successful, a submission to the VL/HCC Graduate Consortium generally has to have the following parts:
- The paper starts with a sentence or two that describes a real-world setting.
- It then identifies a problem in that setting.
- The remainder of the paper’s introduction outlines an approach for solving that problem.
- In a subsequent section, the paper describes a prototype or preliminary study showing the feasibility of that approach.
- The paper explains why more work is still required in addition to this prior work.
- The paper concludes by describing future work that will build on this prior work in order to finish completing the approach.
- Somewhere along the way, the paper explains how the approach builds on, or differs from, other related work.
We have annotated three excellent submissions that exemplify the pattern described above. We hope that you will find these examples thought-provoking and helpful as you design your own submission this year.
- Information on the Web: How End Users Make Use of Data
- Roles in Online Collaborative Problem Solving
- Re-forming the Internet with its End Users
Panel Members and Organizers
- Michelle Ichinco, University of Massachusetts Lowell (chair)
- Anita Sarma, Oregon State University
- Chris Parnin, North Carolina State university
- Mark Minas, Universität der Bundeswehr München
VL/HCC 2019 Important Dates
All deadlines are by the end of the day Anywhere on Earth.
Track | Event/Deadline | Date(s) |
---|---|---|
Workshop/Tutorial Proposals | Submission Deadline | Fri 29 Mar |
Workshop/Tutorial Proposals | Decision Notifications | Mon 15 Apr |
Papers | Abstracts-Only Requested | ASAP Extended! |
Papers | Submission Deadline | Mon 6 May Extended! |
Papers | Initial Review Period | Tue 7 May – Fri 24 May |
Papers | Initial Discussion Period | Sat 25 May – Thu 30 May |
Papers | Preliminary Notifications | Fri 31 May |
Papers | Author Response Period | Fri 31 May – Fri 7 June |
Papers | Author Responses Deadline | Fri 7 June |
Papers | Final Review Period | Sat 8 June – Fri 14 June |
Papers | Final Decision Notifications | Mon 17 June |
Showpieces | Submission Deadline | Fri 28 June |
Showpieces | Decision Notifications | Mon 8 July |
Graduate Consortium | Application Deadline | Sun 7 July Extended! |
Graduate Consortium | Decision Notifications | Mon 8 July |
All Tracks | Camera-Ready Deadline | Fri 12 July |
All Tracks | VL/HCC 2019 Symposium | Mon 14 Oct – Fri 18 Oct |