PLDI Student Research Competition

Accepted Posters

About

The Student Research Competition (SRC) at PLDI is a forum for students to present their research and receive high-quality feedback from experts in the programming languages research community. The SRC is a chance to hone writing and presentation skills, network with peers and senior researchers, and showcase exciting work—including work-in-progress. PLDI invites students (both at the graduate and undergraduate level) to submit their research. If you are an undergraduate student interested in applying to graduate programs, we highly encourage you to participate and get a glimpse of what academic life looks like!

Eligibility Criteria

Participants must have current student status, either graduate or undergraduate, at the time of the submission deadline. Participants in the SRC must also apply and obtain an ACM student membership. There are two separate categories:

• Undergraduate: Currently enrolled for a bachelor’s degree (or equivalent)
• Graduate: Currently enrolled for either a master’s or PhD degree (or equivalent)

Furthermore, the abstract:

• Must contain original research that is not already published at PLDI or another conference or journal. Authors are allowed to submit full versions of the paper at a later conference but the abstract must not overlap with a concurrent PLDI submission.
• Must be authored solely by the student. If the work is collaborative with others and/or part of a larger group project, the abstract should make clear what the student’s role was and should focus on that portion of the work.

If you have any questions on if your work is a good fit for the SRC track, please reach out to the SRC Co-Chairs!

Call for Papers

The main body of the submission is a title and extended abstract (up to 3 pages) consisting of the following:

• Problem and Motivation: Clearly state the problem being addressed and explain the reasons for seeking a solution to this problem.
• Background and Related Work: Describe the specialized (but pertinent) background necessary to appreciate the work in the context of PLDI areas of interest. Include references to the literature where appropriate, and briefly explain where your work departs from that done by others.
• Approach and Uniqueness: Describe your approach in addressing the problem and clearly state how your approach is novel.
• Results and Contributions: Clearly show how the results of your work contribute to programming language design and implementation in particular and to computer science in general; explain the significance of those results.

The SRC welcomes work-in-progress research and aims to provide high-quality feedback to students about their work. After acceptance, papers will go through an additional round of shepherding where reviewers will provide feedback on technical content and writing of the paper. Accepted papers will be posted to the PLDI website.

Participation

The SRC has three stages aimed at providing feedback on different aspects of research presentation:

• 1: Submission phase: Student papers are submitted and reviewed by a committee of expert reviewers
  • Initial Reviews: The program committee provides initial reviews and an accept or reject decision for the abstracts.
  • Shepherding phase: We will assign each accepted submission a “shepherd” from the reviewers, whose role is to help distill feedback to improve the submission. Students will then submit “camera ready”, finalized extended abstracts to be included as part of the PLDI website.
• 2: Poster round: During the conference, students present a poster to in-person judges and conference attendees.
• 3: Presentation round: Judges select finalists from the poster round who then give a final talk (typically around 7 minutes).

Three students from each category (graduate and undergraduate) will be selected as winners. Winners will receive a cash prize: $500, $300, and $200 for the first, second, and third place respectively as well as an award medal. The first place abstracts in each category will be invited to participate in the ACM grand finale.

Submissions

The submission form will require the following:

• The submissions are double blind (the uploaded PDFs must not contain your name or any other identifying information).
• In the supplementary form, please specify:
• Student author’s name, email address, institutional affiliation, and category (undergraduate or graduate)
• Student’s ACM member number. If you don’t already have one, please apply for the discounted student member rate.
• Research advisor’s name(s)
• Mode of presentation (in-person or virtual). Please be conservative in your response: if you think there is a possibility that you might not be able to attend in-person, select the “virtual” option. We are able to accommodate transition to in-person more easily than to virtual.

For the paper submission, ensure:

• Use the acmart template file (overleaf template, latex template).
• Set the options to the class file using \documentclass[sigconf,nonacm,screen,review]{acmart}
• No more than 3 pages. Reference lists do not count towards these limits.

When you’re ready, submit your extended abstract at the submission site: https://pldi26src.hotcrp.com/

Writing Resources.

• How to Write Papers and Give Talks that People Can Follow by Derek Dreyer
• How to Write a Conference Talk by Mike Hicks

Attendance

Update: Unfortunately, a change in SIGPLAN policy this years means PLDI cannot waive registration costs for all students with accepted papers. However, we encourage all students to apply to PLMW and/or conference volunteering positions, which may cover registration and travel expenses.

Good luck, and we hope to see you in June!

For the students who got accepted to the SRC, here are the requirements for the poster and final presentation.

Poster Session

During the poster session, you’ll be presenting your work to the SRC judges and PLDI conference attendees. In addition to receiving feedback from the judges, this is a great opportunity to talk about your work to the broader community. You are free to create posters using whichever software you would like. If this is your first time making a poster, please take a look at the following guides for examples: NYU poster guide, MIT poster guide.

Requirements. Please ensure your posters meet the following criteria. We will not be able to accommodate posters of different sizes.

• Create a poster that can fit up to 3’ x 4’ dimensions.
• The content on your poster should be organized neatly and clearly.
• Choose colors of your choice but make sure it all aligns nicely.
• Please print your own posters and bring them to the venue if you are presenting in person. Plan ahead if you are planning to print the posters at the conference venue.
• We will provide easels to put the posters up.

Final Presentation

Students who progress to the final round will be required to give a talk to the judges.

• The talk should be 7 minutes long, and will be followed by a 4-minute Q&A session at the end of each talk.
• Prepare a slide deck for this round and practice the talk with your mentors.

Virtual Presentations

For students who are unable to attend in-person, a set of judges will meet with them virtually to discuss their project. The students should prepare a virtual poster and walk through it for the judges. If the students are selected for the final round, we will set up virtual talk slot for them.