Doctoral Consortium at HLT/NAACL-2006

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/proj/hlt-naacl-2006-dc/

June 4-7, 2006
New York, NY

Application Deadline: March 3, 2006

1. Call for Participation

The Doctoral Consortium at HLT/NAACL-2006 will provide an opportunity for a group of senior Ph.D. students to discuss and explore their research and career objectives with a panel of established researchers in the fields of natural language processing, speech technology, and information retrieval. The event is also an opportunity for students to gain exposure for their work among the HLT/NAACL research community.

The Doctoral Consortium will be held as a workshop on June 4, 2006, immediately before the start of the main conference. Students will present their work and get feedback from a panel of experienced researchers. The event will also include presentations on professional development topics relevant to students pursuing a career in research.

Students will participate in a poster session held during the main conference and will have a short paper discussing their research published in the companion volume of the proceedings. Each student’s professional biography, research abstract, and photograph will also be included in a “face book” to be distributed to all attendees of the main HLT/NAACL-2006 conference.

The consortium has the following objectives:

1. to provide feedback on participants’ research and on their presentation of their work to others
2. to develop a supportive community of scholars
3. to support a new generation of researchers with information and advice on academic, research, industrial, and non-traditional career paths
4. to contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and participation in conference events

Thanks to financial support from the National Science Foundation and Microsoft Corp., students who participate in the Doctoral Consortium will receive an allowance for basic conference registration, travel, and hotel.   

The main conference also features tutorials, workshops, and demos. More information on these can be found at the main HLT/NAACL-06 page, http://nlp.cs.nyu.edu/hlt-naacl06/

2. Eligibility for Participation

The event is designed for senior Ph.D. students who are in the last few years of their doctoral program (who have already settled on a research direction and who The event is designed for senior Ph.D. students who are in the last few years of their doctoral program (who have already settled on a research direction and who have likely already submitted a thesis proposal). Students who are conducting research on all aspects of human language processing are invited to apply. Topics include (but are not limited to):

As part of the application process, students will submit a short paper summarizing their research goals, completed work, and future directions. This paper should be the basis for the student’s presentation at the Doctoral Consortium event, which should be similar to a brief “job talk.” Thus, the paper should give an overview of the student’s research and highlight his or her contributions; the paper may include citations to previous publications that describe more specific aspects of the student’s research.

The short papers accepted for presentation at the Doctoral Consortium cannot be presented or have been presented at any other meeting with publicly available proceedings. Papers that are being submitted to other conferences must indicate this immediately after the title material on the first page.

Students who are submitting papers on specific portions of their work to the main conference are also invited to apply to the Doctoral Consortium. In this case, the short paper for the Doctoral Consortium must give an overview of the student’s dissertation research, and the paper for the main conference should focus on a specific piece of this work. 

3. Application Procedure

Applications should contain the following four elements:

1. A cover letter (under 2-pages) describing the student’s progress in his or her degree program, expected date of graduation, plans after graduation, and what he or she hopes to gain from the Doctoral Consortium. The letter should contain the student’s name, department, school, contact information, name of advisor, advisor’s e-mail address, and a short statement affirming that the student meets the eligibility requirements specified in Section 2 of this Call for Participation.
    
2. The student’s Curriculum Vitae (including a list of publications).
    
3. A short paper written by the student summarizing his or her research goals, completed work, and future directions. This paper should be the basis for the student’s presentation at the Doctoral Consortium event (which will be like a mini “job talk”), and it should give an overview of the student’s research and highlight his or her major contributions.
    
4. A letter of recommendation from the student’s advisor. The student’s advisor should produce a PDF file of the recommendation letter and e-mail it to hlt-naacl-2006-dc (at) seas.upenn.edu by March 3, 2006.

The student should send an e-mail to hlt-naacl-2006-dc (at) seas.upenn.edu by March 3, 2006, with three attachments in PDF format: the cover letter, the CV, and the short paper.

The short paper should follow the format of "short papers" to the main HLT/NAACL conference. It should follow the two-column format of NAACL/ACL proceedings and should not exceed four (4) pages, including references. We strongly recommend the use of ACL LaTeX style files or Microsoft Word style files tailored for this year's conference. They will be available on the Doctoral Consortium homepage (listed below). A description of the format will also be available in case you are unable to use the style files directly. Papers must conform to the official HLT/NAACL 2006 style guidelines, and we reserve the right to reject submissions that do not conform to these styles including font size restrictions. Submissions should be in PDF format and must include all fonts, so that the paper will print (not just view) anywhere.

Further details on the submission procedure and formatting instructions may be found at the Doctoral Consortium homepage:

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/proj/hlt-naacl-2006-dc/ 

If students are accepted to the Doctoral Consortium, then they will also be asked to submit a short professional biography, research abstract, and photograph to be included in the “face book” to be distributed to all participants at the HLT/NAACL-2006 conference. Detailed formatting guidelines for the preparation of the final camera-ready copy will be provided to authors with their acceptance notice. 

4. Important Dates

All application materials must be received by 11:59pm (23:59) PST (Pacific Standard Time) on March 3, 2006. Late submissions will be automatically disqualified. Acknowledgment will be e-mailed soon after receipt.

Application deadline: March 3, 2006

Notification of acceptance: April 6, 2006

Camera-ready papers due: April 17, 2006

Doctoral Consortium Event: June 4, 2006

HLT/NAACL-2006 Conference: June 5-7, 2006

5. Contact Information

If you need to contact the Co-Chairs of the Student Workshop, please use: hlt-naacl-2006-dc (at) seas.upenn.edu

An e-mail sent to this address will be forwarded to the Co-Chairs.

Doctoral Consortium Co-Chairs:

Matt Huenerfauth, University of Pennsylvania, http://www.huenerfauth.com/

Bo Pang, Cornell University, http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/pabo/

Faculty Advisor:

Mitch Marcus, University of Pennsylvania, http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mitch/