Call for Doctoral Consortium

We invite students from all Ph.D. granting institutions who are in the process of forming or carrying out a plan for their Ph.D. research in the area of Affective Computing to apply for participation in the Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Conference (ACII 2024) Doctoral Consortium (DC). DC will serve as a forum for Ph.D. students to share ideas about their research, developments, and applications in the area of affective computing. The goal is to provide Ph.D. students with an opportunity to present their work to a group of mentors and peers from an international community, to receive feedback on their doctoral research plan and progress, and to build a cohort of young researchers interested in Affective Computing.

Who Should Apply?

Students from any Ph.D. granting institution whose research falls within the area of Affective Computing are encouraged to apply. Although we encourage applications from students at any stage of doctoral training, the DC will most benefit students who are in the process of forming or developing their doctoral research. These students will have passed their qualifiers or have completed the majority of their coursework, will be planning or developing their dissertation research proposal, and will not be very close to completing their dissertation research.

Submission Guidelines

Ph.D. students in an area related to Affective Computing are invited to submit the following materials:

  1. Extended Abstract (4 pages + 1 page for references; please find templates here): A description of the PhD research plan and progress. The submissions should not be anonymous. In particular, it should cover:
    • The key research questions and motivation of the research
    • Background and related work that informs the research
    • A statement of hypotheses or a description of the scope of the technical problem
    • The methodology to achieve the objectives and the proposed solution(s)
    • A description of the work done so far and a tentative plan for future work
    • A statement of research contributions to date (if any) and expected contributions of the Ph.D. work to Affective Computing
    • Reference list
  2. CV: A curriculum vitae of the student.
  3. Authorship and Statement from Advisor: Students are expected to be the sole authors of their submission. The application needs to be accompanied by a note from their Ph.D. advisor confirming student status and endorsement of the submission. The note should clearly indicate the student’s progress in the Ph.D. program (e.g., qualifiers passed, pre-proposal stage, and so on). The advisor can simply email the note to the DC chairs (see below for contact information).

All materials should be prepared in PDF format and submitted through the ACII submission system.

Submission Topics, Instructions, and Proceedings

DC papers should be related to the conference topics. The theme of ACII 2024 is “Human and Beyond (e.g., animals, virtual agents, and robots)”. The goal is to move from interaction settings involving only humans, the most common topic in Affective Computing, to more general scenarios in which multiple types of agents (natural and artificial) share a common social landscape and seamlessly participate in efficient and effective interactions. Thus, ACII 2024 especially welcomes submitted research that explores the interactions among diverse agents. Topics of interest are provided in the general call for papers. The Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium will be published as part of the main Conference Proceedings. Papers should be submitted through the conference submission system.

Review Process

The Doctoral Consortium submissions will be evaluated on a number of factors, including (1) the quality of the submission, (2) the expected benefits of the DC towards the student’s Ph.D. research, and (3) the student’s contribution to the diversity of topics, backgrounds, and institutions, in order of importance. More particularly, the quality of the submission will be evaluated based on the potential contributions of the research to the field of affective computing and its impact on the field and beyond. Finally, we hope to achieve a diversity of research topics, disciplinary backgrounds, methodological approaches, and home institutions in the ACII 2024 Doctoral Consortium cohort.

Attendance

All authors of accepted submissions are expected to register, attend, and present at the Doctoral Consortium and at the associated poster session. 

Important Dates

  • Submission deadline: 10 June 2024 16 June 2024
  • Acceptance notifications: 12 July 2024
  • Camera-ready deadline: 1 August 2024

Questions

For further questions, please contact the Doctoral Consortium co-chairs:

Hanan Salam and Itir Onal Ertugrul dc-chairs@acii-conf.net