Introduction

The EuroSys Doctoral Workshop (EuroDW 2017) will provide a forum for PhD students to present their work and receive constructive feedback from experts in the field as well as from peers. Technical presentations will be augmented with general advice and discussions about getting a PhD, doing research, and post-doctoral careers. We invite applications from PhD students at any stage of their doctoral studies.

EuroDW 2017 will also offer the opportunity for what we call “mentoring moments.” The idea is to give graduate students a chance to talk one-on-one (or, in some cases, one-on-two) about their research with outstanding researchers beyond those available at the students' universities.

Goal of Workshop

The goal of the workshop is to provide feedback and advice to PhD students both on technical aspects of their research as well as career development. We expect a range of attendees such as the present’s peers, as well as senior researchers who will attend to share their expertise. The idea is to create opportunities for students to meet with peers outside of their home institution, to get technical feedback as well as career advice from senior researchers in their field, to find out about internship and job opportunities, and to articulate their own work in a public, non-threatening forum. We encourage the participants to stay for the duration of the EuroSys main conference.

We expect most submissions to be from current PhD students who have selected a clear research topic. Research topics of interest include “systems” work in the broadest sense, including work on formal foundations, as well as the design, implementation and evaluation of real systems. Specifically, research topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Big data analytics frameworks
  • Cloud computing and data center systems
  • Database systems
  • Dependable systems
  • Distributed systems
  • File and storage systems
  • Language support and runtime systems
  • Mobile and pervasive systems
  • Networked systems
  • Operating systems
  • Parallelism, concurrency, and multicore systems
  • Real-time, embedded, and cyber-physical systems
  • Secure systems, privacy and anonymity preserving systems
  • Tracing, analysis, and transformation of systems
  • Virtualization systems

Note: the workshop is not a venue for publication; there will be no published proceedings.

Workshop Format

Applicants will be divided into two groups:

Group A: planners

This is for early-stage PhD students who are focused on research planning. For example, you may be surveying the literature to identify an important unsolved problem, or investigating the feasibility of a possible solution. At the workshop, planners will be expected to:

  1. Give an “elevator pitch” presentation of your proposal. This is a short 10-minute presentation, with only a few slides, identifying the problem that you’re tackling, showing why it is important, and outlining possible solutions or directions.
  2. Present a poster on your proposal.

Group B: finishers

This is for students who are close to finishing their thesis and are thinking about how to write up their research. They may also be considering post-doctoral career options. At the workshop, finishers will be expected to:

  1. Give a 18-minute presentation on your research, in the style of a conference presentation. This will typically describe the problem, say why it matters, and present your solution along with some evaluation.
  2. Present a poster on your research.

All applicants can expect critical, but constructive, feedback on the presented research or research proposal. The posters will provide the opportunity to present more technical detail than is possible in a short presentation, and you can expect in-depth feedback on the work you describe. The participants will also have the option of displaying their posters throughout the main conference. We will match each student with a mentor — a senior researcher who will provide one-on-one feedback during a scheduled break (not necessarily on the workshop day; but including later during the conference).

Submission Instructions

If you would like to participate in the workshop, please submit your materials before the deadline. Submissions will receive written feedback from the PC, but the submission process is very lightweight and the main purpose is to put together the program and to match students with mentors.

Please submit the following materials together with the required information to the online submission site.

Group A:

  • PhD research proposal (as a PDF file, in 2-column, single-spaced, 10pt format, and should be no longer than 2 pages including title, references, figures and all other content).

Group B:

  • Your paper (PDF file) of your main contribution of your doctoral research (alternatively technical report, under submission paper, or a draft article should be OK – any length, please mark the type of your submission)
    OR
  • Research statement (as a PDF file, should be no longer than 5 pages, single column, including title, references, figures and all other content).

In addition, please include the following information in your submission form:

  • PhD advisor’s name and affiliation
  • year when you started your PhD

Important Dates

Submission by: February 3, 2017, 23:59 (UTC) Extended to February 13, 2017, 23:59 (UTC)
Notification of acceptance: March 3, 2017
Workshop date: April 23, 2017

Organizers

Chairs

Marco Canini (KAUST)
Luís Rodrigues (IST, U. de Lisboa)

Committee

Jon Crowcroft (University of Cambridge)
Amr El Abbadi (UCSB)
Paolo Costa (Microsoft Research)
Pascal Felber (University of Neuchâtel)
Gilles Muller (INRIA)
José Pereira (University of Minho)
Simon Peter (UT Austin)
George Porter (UCSD)
John Wilkes (Google)

Mentors

Herbert Bos (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Pascal Felber (University of Neuchâtel)
Brighten Godfrey (UIUC)
Indranil Gupta (UIUC)
Andreas Haeberlen (UPenn)
Taesoo Kim (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Dejan Kostic (KTH)
James Larus (EPFL)
Gilles Muller (INRIA)
Dushyanth Narayanan (Microsoft Research)
Peter Pietzuch (Imperial College)
Rodrigo Rodrigues (IST, U. de Lisboa)
Marco Serafini (QCRI)
Marc Shapiro (UPMC-LIP6 / INRIA)
Ankit Singla (ETH Zurich)
John Wilkes (Google)
Willy Zwaenepoel (EPFL)