Conference review: the 2000 SIGART/AAAI doctoral consortium

T he fifth annual SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium was held in August 2000 during the 17th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). At the consortium, doctoral students in artificial intelligence (AI) presented their proposed research and received feedback from a panel of researchers and other students. This provided the students with exposure to outside perspectives on their work at a critical time in their research and allowed them to explore their career objectives. Free-ranging discussion sessions were also held, covering topics such as the relative benefits of academic versus industry careers; proposal writing; balancing research and teaching; and resisting pressure to leave school without finishing their doctorates. The students also participated in the student poster session, held during the AAAI-2000 /IAAI-2000 Technical Paper Poster Session, and attended social events with the panelists. Altogether, the intensive, 2-day event and continuing contact during the AAAI conference afforded great opportunities for networking and getting to know peers. Twelve students—four women and eight men—presented their work (gender was not considered by the review committee). Nine attend universities in the United States, one in Taiwan, and two in Canada. Their research represents a variety of subfields of AI, ranging from machine learning techniques to knowledge representation. In keeping with the move to integrate AI basic research and applications (highlighted by the merging of AAAI and IAAI), two students presented research focused on applications. Panelists Six distinguished panelists participated in the consortium. Feedback from the students showed that they found the panelists' comments and discussion to be valuable and constructive. The panelists were Marie Reviewing The 12 participants were chosen from 14 submissions. Students were selected who had settled on their thesis focus but who still had significant research remaining. Students were selected on the basis of the clarity and completeness of their submission, their advisor's letter, and other evidence of promise such as published papers and technical reports. Although unusually low in number, the quality of the submissions was very high. The review committee consisted of