Doctoral Consortium – Call for Contributions

PhD students working in the area of Process Mining are invited to submit their proposals for participation in a Doctoral Consortium, which will be held on Sunday, October the 3rd, 2020, in conjunction with the 2nd International Conference on Process Mining (ICPM 2020) in Padua, Italy (https://icpmconference.org/2020/).

The Doctoral Consortium has the following objectives:

  • to provide valuable feedback on students’ research topics, directions, methods and plans;
  • to help students pitch their research ideas to peers in the research community;
  • to promote the development of a community of scholars that will help students in their future careers;
  • to introduce new scholars to the process mining research community and provide opportunities to meet and interact with experienced researchers.

The PhD candidates of the accepted proposals are expected to present their PhD project at the Doctoral Consortium.

We welcome submissions representing a broad spectrum of research topics related to Process Mining. Participants will benefit from the advice of senior researchers in the field and from the interaction with peers being at a similar stage of their careers. Also, they will receive valuable feedback on how to shape their thesis from experts in the area, which could be useful to participate in the Best Process Mining Dissertation Award at ICPM at the end of their Ph.D. programme.

Submission

PhD students interested in engaging in detailed discussions on their research at the Doctoral Consortium are invited to submit an extended abstract, which describes their thesis work and, in particular, elaborates on the following discussion points:

  • The main research question guiding the envisaged research;
  • The motivation of the research questions (what is new about the research question and why is this important to be investigated?);
  • The initial ideas on the solution being proposed and its validity;
  • The planned research methodology and possible techniques being applied, with specific attention on how the results are going to be validated;
  • The relation of the work to the state of the art, especially (but not only) in process mining research.

The points above will be considered by the jury to evaluate the contribution (see “Review process” below for further details).

The extended abstract should be discussed with the respective PhD supervisor before submission. The manuscript must be written in English and prepared using the latest IEEE Computational Intelligence Society conference proceedings guidelines (8.5″ × 11″ two-column format). Templates are available for Latex and Word here. The manuscript should not exceed the length of 2 pages. 

The manuscript should be submitted (as a single PDF file) by midnight (Anywhere on Earth, AoE) by 24 August 2020 via the ICPM 2020 submission website on EasyChair (select the “Doctoral Consortium” track): https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icpm2020. The accepted manuscripts will be published on a volume of CEUR-ws proceedings.

Review process

Submitted proposals will be reviewed by the Doctoral Consortium Committee. The review of the reported research work in each proposal will take into account its originality, its potential for advancing the process mining field, and whether the work is at a stage where the PhD candidate can benefit from participating in the consortium. Also, the presence, clarity and depth of the aforementioned discussion points will determine the judgment of the reviewers. 

Experimental results for the proposed research are not required. However, a concrete plan for the PhD project is a must. Rejected submissions will receive written feedback. Confidentiality of submissions will be maintained throughout the review process.

Notification

Authors will be notified of the result of their submission by 14 September 2020. Accepted doctoral candidates will receive instructions on how to submit a camera-ready copy of their proposal and will receive information on the preparation of the presentation (see “At the conference” next).

Acceptance to the Doctoral Consortium is an honour. In turn, accepted candidates are expected to fully commit themselves to the success of the consortium by being open to new ideas and suggestions and providing ideas and suggestions to other participants. All accepted contributions will be circulated among the participants about one week before the consortium.

At the conference

Due to the exceptional circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the event will be held virtually. The format of the Doctoral Consortium is highly interactive, to the extent that presentations may be subject to changes on the day of the event: students will receive advice on how to better shape their work, and consequently, on how to efficiently revisit the presentations This allows the jury to discuss the essential parts of the thesis. Presentations should take not more than 20 minutes. The remaining time will be filled with discussions. 

Accepted submissions will be presented at the Doctoral Consortium. The venue is open to all participants, including (but not limited to) the students and their supervisors. Attendance is free of charge, and the Doctoral Consortium papers do not come with a publication fee. Students will present their work to the group with substantial time provided for discussions and questions by participating researchers and other students.  The students who present their work are expected to attend every session of the consortium.

The jury will select the best contribution. The winner will hold a 2-minutes pitch during the main conference.

Key Dates

  • Extended abstract submission: 6 August 2020 7 September 2020
  • Notification of acceptance: 7 September 2020 21 September 2020
  • Camera-ready copy: 14 September 2020 28 September 2020
  • Consortium: 4 October 2020

Committee

Doctoral Consortium Chairs

  • Benoît Depaire (Hasselt University, Belgium)
  • Claudio Di Ciccio (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)

Doctoral Consortium Jury

  • Rafael Accorsi, PwC, Switzerland
  • Josep Carmona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
  • Felix Mannhardt, SINTEF Digital, Norway
  • Massimo Mecella, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
  • Hajo A. Reijers, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
  • Wil M.P. van der Aalst, RTWH Aachen, Germany
Click Here for Information on the Organizing Committee