The Doctoral Symposium was canceled due to an insufficient number of submissions.

Following the traditions of the previous years, the 14th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Validation (ICST 2021) hosts a Ph.D. symposium with the following key objectives:

1. To provide constructive feedback and guidance to doctoral students whose dissertation research is related to software testing, verification, and validation.
2. To develop a supportive community of researchers and identify potential collaborators.
3. To o facilitate interaction between students and established researchers and practitioners in the field.

The Symposium will also include insightful keynote presentations from established researchers.

Call for Doctoral Symposium Submissions

The symposium invites Ph.D. students at all stages of their studies, from first-year students to those ready for their final dissertation defense. The symposium requires each student to write a short research summary describing the problem that will be tackled in the Ph.D., some key results (if any), potential plan of the Ph.D. The student will present her/his work at the symposium. After the presentation, students will receive oral feedback from a panel of researchers and practitioners. Students may also seek advice on topics such as how to perform research in testing, how to design and execute empirical research, write scientific papers, and eventually prepare for the defense itself. Accepted research summaries will be published in the conference proceedings.

Scholarships

A limited number of travel grants are available to Ph.D. students. Priority will be based on need and date of submission. Please indicate your interest in being considered for a travel grant along with your submission.

Submission Format

Submissions to the Ph.D. Symposium must include the following:

1. The author of the submission must be the Ph.D student only.
2. A research summary of at most 2 pages, exclusive of references, formatted according to the ICST 2021 formatting instructions. All submissions must be in English and include the following information.
   • Student name, university, name of the research advisor, and project name
   • The problem to be addressed by your thesis (justify the importance and show that it has not yet been addressed)
   • Your research hypothesis or goal
   • The expected contributions of your dissertation research
   • Your proposed research approach
   • Summary of results to date
   • How you plan to evaluate your results and a dissemination plan
3. A CV with research achievements including publications and presentations.
4. A recommendation letter from the dissertation advisor. The letter should include:
   • Name of the student
   • Name of the advisor
   • A candid assessment of the current status of the student’s dissertation research
   • An approximate date for dissertation submission.

Submission must be in the form of a single PDF comprised of the research summary, the CV, and the recommendation letter from the dissertation advisor and submitted via EasyChair at the following address: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icst2021.

Evaluation

The Ph.D. Symposium chairs will evaluate all submissions that meet the submission criteria based on their relevance to the ICST community, their originality, quality of the summary, and their technical soundness.

Award

The best submission, based on summary quality and presentation, will be awarded during the Symposium.