[Air-L] IEEE SmartComp 2026 PhD Forum Call for Contributions

[h-yonekura+ist]

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********************** SmartComp2026 PhD Forum Call for Contributions 
**************************************

The Ph.D. Forum at SmartComp 2026 provides an excellent opportunity for 
Ph.D. students to present their work in progress to the scientific 
community and obtain individual feedback from leading researchers in the 
field. This forum is intended to provide doctoral students with a 
platform to interact with established researchers from both academia and 
industry and get useful guidance on the broader impacts of their 
research.
https://smartcomp2026.unime.it/call-phd-forum/


***PhD Forum Format***

The Forum will be organized as a workshop co-located with SmartComp. In 
addition, the Forum will be supplemented by a one-minute-madness session 
plus a poster session during the main conference, to facilitate extended 
interaction opportunities between Ph.D. student participants and 
researchers from academia, industry, and government.

During the workshop, senior members of the community will be present to 
provide constructive technical comments to each attendee. The Forum will 
provide a working environment for students to refine and practice their 
presentations, helping them improve communication skills, and to 
collaboratively develop research ideas for the PhD research and beyond.

Special recognition will be given to the most innovative and/or most 
promising research project(s) presented at the Ph.D. Forum based on the 
pitch talk, the presented poster, and the discussion with the 
participants during the poster session.

Current Ph.D. students at any stage of their career are encouraged to 
submit a 3-page extended abstract about their research. Submissions are 
expected to include motivation of the importance and challenges to the 
particular problem, and initial results that support either the 
importance of the research problem or viability of solutions.

The abstract should include the author’s name, affiliation and email 
address. The name of the supervisor should be marked (“supervised by …”) 
on the paper, under the author’s name. Authors of accepted submissions 
are expected to participate in-person. The proceedings of the Forum will 
be included in the proceedings of the main conference.


***Submission Guidelines***

Submissions must be in PDF format, be no more than three pages in length 
(all included) and adhere to the IEEE two-column conference format (the 
same format used for paper submissions to SmartComp2026).

All manuscripts must be registered and submitted through the EDAS 
Submission Site at the following link:
https://edas.info/N34458



***Participation***

Authors of accepted submissions are expected to participate in the Ph.D. 
Forum (a half-day workshop immediately prior to the main conference), 
and to deliver an elevator pitch and A1 poster presentation for their 
work during the main program of the SmartComp2026 conference.

Participants who are current full-time students are eligible for the 
student registration fee. However, please note that any other 
publication in SmartComp—including main conference papers, posters, 
demos, workshop papers, or work-in-progress submissions—requires at 
least one author to register at the full rate. If a student planning to 
attend the PhD Forum is also a co-author of any such publication, and no 
other co-author is registering at the full rate, the student must 
register at the full rate and is not eligible for the student rate.

Some students will also be able to apply for travel grants (when details 
are available, they will be published on the SmartComp website).


***Important Dates***
- Submission: 15th April 2026
- Acceptance notification: 20th April 2026
- Camera ready: 30th April 2026


SMARTCOMP 2026 PhD Forum Chairs
- Franca Delmastro, IIT-CNR, Italy
- Simone Silvestri, University of Kentucky, USA


We look forward to your submissions and to welcoming you in Messina, 
Italy, in June 2026!

Sincerely,
---------
Haruki Yonekura
Publicity and Social Media Co-Chair, IEEE SMARTCOMP 2026
https://smartcomp2026.unime.it/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ieee-smartcomp/
Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of 
Osaka, Japan
Mobile Computing Laboratory