Call for Contributions to the Doctoral Consortium

We invite PhD students working in the broad research areas served by AAMAS to take part in the Doctoral Consortium (DC) of AAMAS-2024. The DC is an opportunity to interact closely with established researchers in your field as well as other students, to receive feedback on your work, and to get advice on managing your career.

Each accepted student will be matched with an established researcher from the community who will act as the student’s mentor. The mentor will interact closely with the student, will provide feedback on research and career management questions, and help foster new contacts. Each accepted student also will have the opportunity to present their work to their peers and senior members of the community attending. The programme will be completed with an informal lunch for participating students and mentors as well as a panel discussion focusing on questions of career management.

The DC is specifically intended for PhD students who already have a concrete research proposal and preliminary results, but who still have sufficient time before the completion of their dissertation so as to be able to benefit from the DC experience. Preference will be given to students satisfying these criteria, but well-motivated applications from students who are at earlier or later stages of their doctoral studies will also be considered.

Important Dates 

  • Submission Opens: Monday, 13 November 2023
  • Abstract Deadline: Monday, 8 January 2024
  • Submission Deadline: Friday, 12 January 2024
  • Author Notification: Monday, 12 February 2024
  • Camera-Ready Deadline: Monday 26 February 2024

All deadlines are at the end of the specified day, anywhere on Earth (UTC-12).

Submission

1. Application package: A complete application package to the DC should be submitted asa single PDF and should have the following components (in this order):
  • Cover page (1 page), with the following information: name, university, homepage, preferred personal pronouns, citizenship, PhD start date, expected graduation date, and name(s) of PhD supervisor(s).
  • Extended abstract (2 pages + 1 page of references) motivating and describing your PhD topic and outlining some of the results obtained so far as well as your plans for continuing the work.
  • Personal statement (1 page) with citations and brief discussions of up to five papers that have inspired your own research.
  • Curriculum vitae (at most 2 pages), including your list of publications.

The extended abstract must be formatted using the official AAMAS-2024 submission format,including abstract and keywords. Look at the proceedings of past editions of AAMAS for inspiration for how to write such a document.

 In addition, you will need to provide:

2. Letter of support: A 1-page letter (PDF) by your supervisor (signed and on official letterhead), in which they confirm that they support your application to the DC and explain why they believe that this is the right moment for you to attend the DC. A detailed letter of recommendation is neither required nor expected.

3. Mentor suggestions: The names and affiliations of three or more individuals you would hope might get assigned to you as a mentor during the DC. These should be established members of the AAMAS research community who would typically attend the conference. For inspiration, look at the listings of PC and SPC members of recent editions of the conference and ask your supervisor for advice.

If your application is accepted, your extended abstract (and none of the other components of your application package) will get published in the official AAMAS-2024 conference proceedings.

Submissions should be made through the AAMAS 2024 submission system (AAMAS-2024 EasyChair Site) by selecting “Track: Doctoral Consortium”.

AAMAS 2024 Doctoral Consortium Submission Link

Note that you will need to register an abstract (outlining your research topic in a few lines) several days before the final submission deadline. You can update your submission as often as you like before that final deadline, and you are advised to make use of this opportunity.

You are welcome to also apply for a scholarship, but please note that this is a separate process. While acceptance to the DC may play a role in scholarship decisions, those decisions are made by the scholarship chairs and are subject to available funding.

Questions?

For any questions, please contact the DC chairs (aamas24-dc@easychair.org), or directly: Bahar Rastegari (University of Southampton, b.rastegari@soton.ac.uk) and Serena Villata (Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Inria, I3S villata@i3s.unice.fr).

Programme Committee 

The extended abstracts submitted will be reviewed by members of the programme committee specifically assembled for this purpose. 

Noa Agmon

Maria Gini  

Fernando P. Santos 

Natasha Alechina  

Marc Lanctot

Silvia Schiaffino  

Christopher Amato 

Jérôme Lang

Sebastian Stein 

Leila Amgoud 

Birgit Lugrin  

Samarth Swarup

Elizabeth Black

Viviana Mascardi

Matthew Taylor

Rafael H. Bordini

Nicolas Maudet

Kagan Tumer

Siobhán Clarke

Frans Oliehoek

Serena Villata (co-chair)

Ed Durfee

Catherine Pelachaud

Toby Walsh

Edith Elkind

Bahar Rastegari (co-chair)

Michael Winikoff

Piotr Faliszewski

Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar

Lirong Xia

Enrico Gerding

Jeffrey S. Rosenschein

Makoto Yokoo