Details

Lecturer(s)

Dieter Fensel

Definition

The seminar is targeted at PhD students whose research interests cover the Semantic Web and Web Service areas. It will help the students concretize their research intentions and receive feedback on the soundness and completeness of their achieved work.

NEW

The second preliminary discussion is scheduled for October, 25,  15:30 - 16:30 in room 3W03.

Introduction

The doctoral seminar will bring together PhD students from DERI in order to present the latest progress in their doctoral research and open their newest ideas up to discussion. It will help the students concretize their research intentions and receive feedback on the soundness and completeness of their achieved work. Presenting their own work to a peer group also constitutes a good opportunity for them to practise the defence of their dissertation.

By contrast to similar initiatives usually co-located with scientific events in the field, such as the ESWC series, workshop participants will not only receive constructive comments with respect to topic-specific research issues; they will also be assisted in formulating a coherent research narrative of their doctoral work.

A set of guidelines, which have been designed to highlight the key methodological components required for a sound research narrative at various stages of the PhD work, can be used by the students to organize the content of their research reports and associated seminar presentations (see below).

The seminar will take place on November 22-24 (2.5 days) in Innsbruck. The first two days will be covered by the presentations of the work of the students. The last half day of the event is dedicated to open discussions on PhD related topics. In this context PhD students who are in the process of completing their doctoral thesis are encouraged to share their experiences and lessons learned during this challenging time with the audience.

Important Dates

1. Preliminary discussion: 3 October 2006, 16:00 - 17:00, 3W03

2. Preliminary discussion: 25 October 2006, 15:30 - 16:30, 3W03

Submission of contributions: 23 October 2006

Completion of the reviewing process: 06 November 2006

Workshop: 22-24 November 2006

Call for Contributions

The seminar is targeted at all PhD students at DERI, in particular at those who are still in the process of defining the main research questions of their thesis, or starting to elaborate the answers to these questions.

The participants will be asked to submit a summary of their doctoral work which complies to the following template:

1. Problem statement: this part should clearly provide answers to the following questions:
1. What are the core dimensions of the field of research in which the thesis is situated?
2. Which problems are still unsolved to date? Why do these areas need further exploration?
3. How could this gap be filled? Is the problem solvable at all?
4. Are these problems addressed in many previous approaches? Is it feasible to think that my thesis would greatly contribute to solving these problems? Is there room for improvement?
5. What are the critical success factors? How can these risks be minimized? What are the worst case strategies; the worst expectable outcome?
6. Are these problems addressed (possibly under a different name) in other communities and what are the results achieved in this context?
7. Is it a hot topic or is it becoming already obsolete?
8. What is the impact of a potential solution on the community?
9. Which are the application scenarios in which this problem is relevant 
2. Main questions of the thesis: this part should clearly formulate the research questions the PhD aims to provide answers to, while positioning the work in a broader context and delimiting it from similar or related approaches. This part should address the following issues:
1. What are the main research questions?
2. What issue you do not solve in your thesis? What are your assumptions 
3. General approach: this part should give an overview of the work done (or planned to be done) in the thesis. It should define the research methods supporting the PhD research, sketch the path towards the achievement of the thesis objectives and specify the expected results. Relevant questions to be answered at this level could be:
1. What are the methods you (intend to) apply in your research (design research, case studies, user interviews, statistical methods etc.)
2. What are the main actions which need to be carried on in order to achieve the desired results?
3.  What is the expected outcome? How does this outcome differ from related approaches (improve the performance of an algorithm, reduce the costs of a process, improve the usability of a method etc.)
4. Proposed solution: this part describes the approach to the research problem previously stated, outlining the results achieved so far and the things which still need to be realized.
5. Evaluation: in this section the paper should provide details on the evaluation methods, report on the evaluation results and discuss the implications of these results within and beyond the scope of this work. Relevant issues in this context are for instance:
1. What methods do you use to validate your research?
2. What are the main target audience groups for your evaluation results? Who should be interested in the results of your research?
3. What are the results of the evaluation procedure?
4.  How well does your approach perform compared to related solutions?
5. Is there room for improvement? How could your solution be improved.
6. Do your results have implications beyond the scope of the thesis and which are these implications 
6. Future work: issues which remain to be approached in the context of the thesis or beyond.

The first research report has a clear focus on the definition of the problem statement. This implies that it should elaborate on bullets 1 and 2, while clarifying the research methodology as part of bullets 3 and sketching some preliminary ideas the prospected thesis will build upon (bullet 4). Further on, it is important that the student timely specifies the expected outcome of his PhD work (bullet 5).

The second research report elaborates the 4^th and 5^th bullets while refining and revising the previous ones. At this point it is essential that the student designs a suitable evaluation framework for the validation of his PhD research, critically analyzes the achieved results and compares them to related approaches (bullet 4).

The length of the contributions depends on the current status of the PhD work---as foreseen by the DERI Master Plan and in accordance to the self-estimations of the students:

• 0. phase: Too early to provide input but will follow the seminar
• 1.phase: Find and formulate the research problem (6 – 15 pages)
• 2.phase: Elaborate and evaluate the solution (20 – 30 pages)
• 3.phase: Write up the thesis (preliminary version of the thesis) 

The table below suggests how the submissions could be structured with respect to the recommended number of pages.

Section	Recommended number of pages (Phase I)	Recommended number of pages (Phase II)
Problem statement	approx. 40 % of the total number of pages	approx. 15% of the total number of pages
Main questions	20%	10%
General approach	20%	10%
Proposed solution	10%	40%
Evaluation	5%	20%
Future work	5%	5%

Submissions should be formatted in Springer LNCS format (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html) and submitted as PDF documents. These formatting guidelines do not apply for students in the 3^rd category. Every submission should clearly state the status (phase) of the PhD work and the name of the supervisor(s). The submissions should be sent per mail to Elena Simperl at simperl@inf.fu-berlin.de as PDF.

Each submission will be reviewed by at least one scientific advisor against the following criteria:

• Originality and impact in the community
• Rigorousness and scientific soundness of the overall research proposal and of the preliminary results
• Quality of the presentation
• Maturity of the solution and status of the PhD work as compared to the DERI Master Plan.

Per default the work of each PhD student will be evaluated by his/her supervisor at DERI. However, we encourage students to propose additional external reviewers (e.g. potential supervisors of their dissertation).

The participants will be required to present their work at the doctoral workshop. The duration of the talks depends on the phase of the PhD thesis of each student:

• 1.phase: 10 minutes talk + 20 minutes discussion led by the supervisor
• 2.phase: 15 minutes talk + 25 minutes discussion led by the supervisor
• 3.phase: 20 minutes talk + 10 minutes discussion led by the supervisor

In order to ensure an efficient and effective workshop organization and participation, it is recommended that the students comply with these guidelines when designing their workshop talks. We recommend the following template for organizing the slides so as to meet these goals, with suggestions for how much time to devote to each:

Phase	Subject	Recommended number of slides
Phase I (5-8 slides, 10 minutes talk)	Problem statement	1-2 slides
	Research questions and expected contributions	1 slide
	General approach	1-2 slides
	Work done so far	1-2 slides
	Future work	1 slide
Phase II (8-11 slides, 15 minutes talk)	Problem statement	1-2 slides
	Research questions and expected contributions	1 slide
	Proposed solution	4-5 slides
	Evaluation	1-2 slides
	Future work	1 slide
Phase III (10-14 slides, 20 minutes talk)	Problem statement	1-2 slides
	Contributions	1 slide
	Proposed solution	5-7 slides
	Evaluation	2-3 slides
	Outlook	1 slide

Workshop Organization

Dieter Fensel (DERI Innsbruck, Austria)

Elena Paslaru Bontas Simperl (Free University of Berlin, Germany)

Scientific Advisors

Stefan Decker
Ying Ding

John Domingue
Dieter Fensel
Manfred Hauswirt
Stijn Heymann
Martin Hepp

Jörg Hoffmann
Michael Kifer

eva Kühn

Lyndon Nixon
Elena Paslaru Bontas Simperl
Thomas Strang
York Sure
Laurentiu Vasiliu
Tomas Vitvar
Michal Zaremba

Additional Information

Questions regarding the organization of the workshop and proposals for additional reviewers should be addressed to Elena Simperl at simperl@inf.fu-berlin.de.