Graduate Student Symposium
Detailed Program
11:00am EDT - Welcome and Graduate Keynote
CAIAC 2021 Best MSc Award
Graph Attention Networks with Auxiliary Positional Embedding Models
11:30am EDT - Session 1
12:20pm EDT - Lunch Break
12:40pm EDT - Session 2
1:30pm EDT - Session 3
2:20pm EDT - Afternoon Break
2:30pm EDT - Post Graduate Career Panel
With Colin Cherry, Shahrear Iqbal, Parinaz Sobhani, Ruth Urner
3:30pm EDT - Close
Call for Papers
The 34th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence invites graduate students to submit research plans and extended abstracts summarising their thesis research for the possible inclusion in the AI 2021 Graduate Student Symposium and the AI 2021 proceedings published in PubPub open access online format (https://www.pubpub.org/). The Symposium provides an opportunity for Master’s and PhD students to discuss and explore their research interests and career objectives with their peers and with a panel of established researchers in Artificial Intelligence, helping to develop a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research.
Important Dates
Submission deadline: 26 February 2021 extended to 7 March 2021 (11:59 p.m. UTC-12)
Author notification: 6 April 2021
Final submissions due: 25 April 2021
Graduate Student Symposium: 25 May 2021
Details on the Graduate Student Symposium and the submission process
The symposium will be a pre-conference virtual event, on 25 May 2021, where students of accepted submissions will be invited to give a presentation on their thesis work before a group of peers as well as a small team of recognized AI researchers who will offer a critique of each presentation and provide support, advice, and mentoring.
Graduate students are invited to submit a summary of their on-going thesis work from all areas of Artificial Intelligence. All submissions must be written in English.
The authors should consult the authors’ guidelines for Canadian AI and use one of the provided proceedings templates for LaTeX to prepare their submissions, with the exception that the “abstract” within the template should be omitted. Two types of submission are accepted. A research plan may be up to 2 pages in length, not including references, and is intended for early-stage projects. An extended abstract may be up to 4 pages in length, not including references, and is intended for work that has at least some preliminary results. All submissions must clearly state the research problem, the proposed solution and approach, and the description of the progress to date, including significant results if appropriate.
Authors of accepted submissions will be allocated time for an oral presentation at the conference. At least one author of each accepted submission is required to present the work at the conference. The authors must agree to this requirement prior to submitting their work for review.
Program committee members will review each submission. Presenting students will be selected based on clarity of the submission, significance of the problem, novelty of the solution, quality of the research, and evidence of promise such as peer-reviewed papers or technical reports.
The submission should be accompanied by the following materials:
- A cover letter stating your name, institution, supervisor’s name and email address, program start date, expected graduation date, and 2-5 keywords describing your work. Also include references to any related refereed and non-refereed publications and presentations.
- A letter of support from your thesis advisor that includes an assessment of the current status of your thesis research and expected contributions and graduation date.
Please combine all materials into one PDF document and submit by the deadline shown on the main GSS-2021 website. To submit your work, please go to the AI 2021 – Graduate Student Symposium Submission site and follow the instructions.
All students are encouraged to attend and participate in the Symposium, whether or not they apply to present their work. All the selected student presenters are expected to actively participate in the full Symposium, as we envision participants gaining as much by interacting with their peers as by having their presentations critiqued by the faculty panel.
Partial financial assistance will be available to students presenting at the Symposium, as funding allows.
Program co-chairs
Dan Lizotte, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario
Michael Cormier, Dept. of Computer Science, Mount Allison University
FAQ
Q1. Do I have to be a graduate student to submit my work?
A1. The first author, or a solo author, has to be a graduate student. An undergraduate student can be a co-author if they have helped with experiments. Note that the work has to be presented by the graduate student.
Q2. Can I submit an abstract of my completed dissertation?
A2. The Graduate Student Symposium aims to help students to define and make progress on their thesis. We accept submissions that show work in progress – during the period from thesis proposal formulation through to theoretical proofs and empirical studies.
Q3. Should my supervisor(s) support my GSS submission?
A3. We expect a one-page support letter from your supervisor(s). The letter must be sent together (as one PDF) with the 4-page abstract or 2-page research plan and the student cover letter. Financially, we are hoping that supervisors are able to support their students.
Q4. Can my supervisor(s) co-author the submissions?
A4. Supervisor(s) should be acknowledged somewhere in the abstract but are not to be co-authors. Front page’s footnote or Acknowledgement before Bibliography are good places to list the name(s). However, your supervisor(s) cannot co-author the abstract. The same rule applies to post-doctoral fellows: we would not accept abstracts co-authored by post-doctoral fellows.
Q5. We are two graduate students and want to submit one abstract for our two research projects. Is this OK?
A5. We encourage you to submit separate abstracts. If a joint project is better explained via one abstract, then you can try to make the case in your cover letter.
Q6. I have an abstract accepted by GSS. Can I have some financial support to attend GSS?
A6. We encourage you to apply for GSS funding in your cover letter. Presenting students will compete for (partial) funding of their GSS expenses. You can also apply for financial support for the conference volunteers.
Q7. I do not have an abstract accepted by GSS. Can I apply for financial support to attend?
A7. We are working to keep the cost of attending the GSS a low as possible (see the AI conference website). Financial support is designed for students whose abstracts have been accepted. You can also apply for financial support for the conference volunteers.
