AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium (DC)

The AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium (DC) provides an opportunity for a group of Ph.D. students to present their research and explore their career objectives with a panel of established researchers in artificial intelligence. The consortium has the following objectives:

To provide a setting for mutual feedback on participants' current research and guidance on future research directions.
To develop a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research.
To support a new generation of researchers with information and advice on academic, research, industrial, and nontraditional career paths.
To contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and participation in conference events.

The list of papers to be presented at AAAI-06 can be found in the AAAI-06 proceedings.

The Doctoral Consortium is designed primarily for students who are at or near the point of submitting their dissertation proposals, with one or two years remaining before completion of the Ph.D. This year’s consortium includes 13 student presentations. All registered AAAI-06 attendees are welcome to attend the Doctoral Consortium (students are particularly encouraged to do so).

Some comments from AAAI-05 attendees:

“It was an extremely intense and rewarding experience that left me feeling excited about my thesis work.”
“The poster was a great way to get the word out about our research (I got a number of job leads this way!)”
“I particularly like the presentation + comment strategy since it offers PhD students a better chance to realize the strength and the weakness of thesis work.”
“I really liked the DC, since it provided a forum for all kind of different student researchers in AI to get together and obtain feedback from experienced researchers. I like the open atmosphere of the forum, one was able to make mistakes and learn from it for the future.”
“Another nice side effect of the DC was that I knew immediately over 20 people at AAAI and always had somebody to talk to after the DC was over and got introduced to many more interesting people. That was really nice for networking!”
“The comments that were the most helpful to me were the ones on presentation techniques, etc. because you don't get those at a regular talk.”
“The DC was an invaluable experience for me -- for many reasons, but primarily because it was my first opportunity to present to a broader AI community.”
“In addition to making many great contacts (students and professors), I got a lot of specific feedback about my thesis and my presentation that I will definitely make use of.”

Support for the 2006 Doctoral Consortium is provided by ACM's SIGART and AAAI. Additional funding is provided by the NSF.

Please consult the Doctoral Consortium Call for Applications for additional information.