Call for PhD Forum

The PhD Forum at NetSys 2025 follows the tradition and format of similar events at international conferences such as PerCom, UbiComp, and MobiSys. The aim is twofold: First, the forum aims to provide doctoral students in any phase of their career an opportunity to discuss their research with experts and gain feedback and advice. Second, the PhD Forum provides a friendly and supportive environment with excellent opportunities for young researchers to establish connections (leading to possible collaborations) with peers as well as with established experts.

What can I expect?

The PhD Forum is a dedicated half-day event of discussions and fun with your peers and the NetSys community. Our goal is to clearly illustrate that doing a PhD is worth the journey, whether you want to continue in academia or industry. The journey might be cumbersome but also brings a lot of joy, and most importantly, you are not alone.

The PhD Forum will consist of three parts:

• A one-minute madness introduction per participant to get to know each other.
• Keynote speakers who will share their research journey from a PhD student to a leading expert.
• Q&A and roundtable discussion where you will have the opportunity to ask meta questions about, e.g., time management, publication strategy, collaborations, research marketing, or handling failures. We will collect your questions anonymously before the PhD Forum.

All PhD forum participants will present their research topic as a poster during the main NetSys conference. The PhD Forum is in the afternoon, so it is possible to attend both the PhD Forum and a tutorial.

What should I submit?

We welcome PhD students in any phase of their career. Prospective participants should prepare an application that includes the following information:

• Curriculum Vitae: a brief biographical sketch describing affiliations and research interests of the PhD student. Please include the PhD start date and (expected) date for completing the dissertation
• A motivation letter (1 page max.) that should discuss the following aspects:
  • Motivation: why do you want to attend the PhD Forum and what do you expect to gain from it? What do you enjoy most and what do you struggle with in your current PhD work and environment?
  • Your research area and the specific problem you are working on.

We will collect questions for the Q&A after notification of acceptance.

Submission should be done electronically as PDF via email to both chairs (see below).

Important Dates:

• Submission deadline: Friday, June 22th, 2025, Thursday, July 17th, 2025
• Notification of acceptance: Friday, July 20th, 2025

PhD Forum Chairs

• Bastian Bloessl, TU Darmstadt, Germany (mail@bastibl.net)
• Florian Klingler, TU Ilmenau, Germany (florian.klingler@tu-ilmenau.de)