Doctoral Consortium

The Doctoral Consortium (DC) aims to provide students with the opportunity to engage with established researchers closely, get feedback on their research, gain advice on career possibilities, foster networking, and present their work during the conference. Nonetheless, the submission to the DC is open to all students, including master's students and undergraduates who work on combinatorial search. Submissions are welcomed from the area of heuristic search and other forms of combinatorial search and optimization related to the research in artificial intelligence, robotics, planning, constraint programming, meta-reasoning, navigation, bioinformatics, and other areas of computer science and operations research.

As part of the Doctoral Consortium, SoCS will provide graduate students with an opportunity to get in-depth advice from senior members regarding careers and research skills. Each student accepted to the DC (see below for the acceptance procedure) will be matched with an established researcher in the field, who will assist the student with research and career management advice.

We invite all students to apply.

Student support

SoCS will aim to provide student support, partly covering registration or/and travel costs through a separate scholarship application process. Participation in the DC, however, is a requirement for students receiving travel assistance. 

More information will be announced soon.

Timeline

• May 7, 2025: submission deadline (May 17 for applicants with accepted paper/extended abstract to SoCS 2025).

• May 23, 2025: notification of accept/reject.

• May 30, 2025: confirmation of participation deadline by the student.

• May 30, 2025: camera-ready deadline (only for abstracts).

All times are 23:59 Anywhere On Earth, UTC-12.

Application procedure for the Doctoral Consortium

To participate in the Doctoral Consortium, an application must be submitted at the Doctoral Consortium Track (link to be added soon).

Applicants for the Doctoral Consortium should submit:

1. One of the following:

   1. Either an extended abstract or a long/short paper accepted to SoCS 2025 with the student as the first author.

   2. Another conference paper (such as AAAI, IJCAI, ECAI, ICAPS, CP, SAT, CPAIOR) or journal paper (such as JAIR, AIJ, JAAMAS) accepted in 2024 or 2025, where the student is the first author. The research topic of the abstract or paper must fall into the topics of interest of SoCS-25. It is necessary to submit the paper to the submission system.

   3. Student Abstract. An abstract outlining the student's research. The abstract should not exceed 2 pages, including references, and must adhere to the AAAI two-column, camera-ready style. It is essential to designate "(Student Abstract)" at the end of the title. Papers that surpass the specified length and formatting guidelines will be rejected. Student abstracts won’t be published in the proceedings. See the author kit .

2. Proof of being a student. Applicants must provide documentation confirming their current student status. Acceptable documents include a student ID (with graduation date), an enrollment letter, or a letter from the candidate's advisor, program coordinator, or school administration verifying the applicant's enrollment.