The ACM ISS Doctoral Symposium (DS) provides doctoral students with the opportunity to meet and discuss their work with each other and a panel of experienced researchers in an informal and interactive setting. Participants will present their dissertation research in a constructive environment and receive expert and peer feedback on their research topics and possible career paths in academia, industry and government research. The Symposium aims to support community building by connecting early-stage and established researchers. The ideal time to apply to participate in the DS is when some progress has been made in Ph.D. research and a path to completion is planned but could benefit from outside opinions and refinement. This includes mid-stage Ph.D. students who are planning the next steps in their research, as well as late-stage Ph.D. students who are looking for feedback on their job talk. We encourage Ph.D. students in all stages to apply independently of their progress.

All research topics suitable for the ACM ISS Conference and associated workshops are appropriate for the DS. The DS chairs aim to achieve diversity among the student cohort, including diversity across research groups and geographical areas. Refer to previous years’ proceedings for examples: https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3696762#sec1

All Ph.D. students are welcome to apply regardless of whether they are presenting at the main conference or not. Each submission will be reviewed by the DS chairs to assess its suitability for the DS, as well as additional expert reviewers when necessary. Authors of accepted submissions will present their work in a dedicated session and registration will be free for PhD students who do not present any other papers during the conference.

New in 2026 will be the inclusion of a mentor for each doctoral student who attends the DS. Mentors will only be assigned very close to the date of the conference, as we will rely on identifying appropriate and available delegates who are willing to mentor a student. Mentoring involves meeting each other, advice on how to get the most from the conference and a request that the mentor introduce the student to a few members of the wider community they know as a way to extend their network. This is a light-weight mentoring scheme and isn’t intended to go beyond ISS 2026 nor are mentor and mentee expected to meet regularly at ISS (beyond a preliminary meeting).

Submission

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects . Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and has recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. We are committed to improving author discoverability, ensuring proper attribution and contributing to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

Every submission should include:

• an extended abstract – no more than 6 pages (excluding references) in pdf format according to the ACM Master Article Submission Template (single column).
• a poster to be presented during the poster session. This will allow students to engage with a broader audience and to gain additional feedback and experience.

PhD Students should submit an extended abstract that describes:

• the problem that their thesis aims to address;
• the broad approach and how it builds upon and goes beyond key relevant previous work;
• the work completed and the plan for the full dissertation work;
• open questions/issues for discussion and/or what you want to get out of participating in the symposium.

Completed work may be presented as an overview or highlighting a particularly important part in depth.

Submissions should not be anonymized for review.

Please submit your Doctoral Symposium proposal using the ISS Precision Conference submission system by the deadline on September 18, 2026. The authors will be notified by October 18 (5 days before early registration on October 23, 2026).

We encourage authors of papers in all tracks submitted to ISS 2026 to apply to the DS.

Format

The ISS DS will be held as in-person only.

Panelists

To be announced

Doctoral Symposium Co-Chairs

• Aaron Quigley, Australian National University, Australia
• Adalberto Simeone, KU Leuven, Belgium

Contact

If you have any questions, please reach out to the DS chairs at doctoral2026@iss.acm.org

Important Dates AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

Conference
Nov. 23-26, 2026	Main Conference

Submissions and Deadlines
	Doctoral Symposium submission due
	Doctoral Symposium notification to authors
	Doctoral Symposium camera-ready due