ACM/IEEE 16th International Conference on
Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems

 

Call for ACM SRC:
Student Research Competition

For the first time MoDELS 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 2013. The Student Research Competition has the following goals:

1. 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
2. to give students the opportunity to meet with and interact with MoDELS attendees to share ideas, gain new insights, and understand possible practical applications
3. to give students an opportunity to sharpen their communication skills, including visual, organizational, oral, and aural modalities
4. to provide detailed feedback to students about their research and presentation, from a panel of distinguished judges from industry and academia
5. 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; you must submit a single-authored version of your 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.

Each competition entry must be authored by one student only – neither supervisors or other students are allowed as co-authors.

For work accepted to the MoDELS 2013 Student Research Competition, a travel grant of up to US $500 will be awarded to help cover travel expenses to the conference. While the student must be an ACM member to qualify for travel funding and awards, she/he does not need to be one to submit to the competition.

The top three winners at models 2013 in each category (undergraduate and graduate) will receive prizes of US $500, US $300, and US $200, respectively. All winners will receive an award plaque and two-year complimentary ACM membership with a subscription to ACM’s Digital Library. Winners will be recognized during the closing plenary session of the models 2013 conference. These winners will also go on to compete in the ACM Grand Finals with winners from other ACM conferences.

How to Participate

Step 1: Submit a Research Abstract

To participate in the competition, submit a research abstract related to the main themes of the conference (see the Call for Foundations Track for a list of conference topics). The submission should describe: the 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 2013 in Miami.

Step 2: First Round Competition - Present a Poster

The first round of the competition will take place in Miami at the MoDELS 2013 conference and will be a poster session. This is your opportunity to present your research to conference attendees and leading experts in the software engineering fields, 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) and select students to advance to the second round of the competition.

Step 3: Second Round Competition - Give a Presentation (selective)

Selected students will continue by giving a short presentation of their research before a panel of judges in a special session at the MoDELS 2013 conference in Miami. After each presentation, there will be a short question and answer session.

Evaluations are based on the presenter's knowledge of his/her research area, contribution of the research, and the quality of the oral and visual presentation. Three winners will be chosen in each category, undergraduate and graduate, and receive prizes.

Final Step: MODELS 2013 Awardees Participate in SRC Grand Finals

All undergraduate and graduate student winners from the SRC held at MODELS 2013 will advance to the SRC Grand Finals. A different panel of judges evaluates 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.

Submissions

All submissions to the ACM SRC @ MODELS 2013 will be published in a post-conference volume of CEUR with page numbers and indexed in the DBLP.

The research abstract must conform at time of submission to the Springer LNCS template. Details about the required submission format can be found here.

The core content of your proposal must not exceed 5 pages, including all text, appendices, and figures. However, please note that for this SRC, references do not count against the page limit: the list of references may expand into a sixth page but no content (text, figures) is allowed on the sixth page, i.e., the sixth page, if any, should contain nothing except all or part of your references. All submissions must be in English. Submissions must be in PDF format.

Papers must be submitted electronically through EasyChair. The EasyChair URL for submission is:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=models-acm-src2013

Prizes and Student Support Information

Students who are selected to participate in the main competition at the MoDELS conference round are entitled to a stipend for their travel expenses, up to a maximum of US$500.

The top three winners in each category (undergraduate and graduate) will be recognized during the conference and will receive prizes of US$500, US$300, and US$200, respectively. The winners of the MODELS SRC are also invited to compete with winners from other conferences in the ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals.

For more information about the ACM SRC, please visit the FAQ at http://src.acm.org/faqs.html.

Important Dates

15 July 2013	ACM SRC submission
23 August 2013	Notification to students
30 Sep 2013	Round 1: ACM SRC Poster Session
2 Oct 2013	Round 2: Finalists Presentation Round
3 Oct 2013	Awards Presentation

All deadlines are hard. No extensions will be allowed. Deadline is midnight for time zone UTC -12.

ACM SRC Organization and Contact Information

The ACM SRC Chairs are:

• Davide Di Ruscio, University of L’Aquila, Italy
• Ethan Jackson, Microsoft Research, USA

They can be contacted at: ACM-SRC@modelsconference.org.

The names of the ACM SRC Selection Committee members can be found on the Committees Web Page.

Sponsors

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