Student Research Competition

Student Research Competition

Quick Facts

Important Dates

All times are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone. When the deadline is day D, the last time to submit is when D ends AoE. Check your local time in AoE.

• Submission deadline: January 13, 2022
• Notification: January 31, 2022
• e-rights completion deadline: February 7, 2022
• initial upload to TAPS deadline: February 14, 2022
• publication-ready deadline: February 28, 2022

Submission Details

• Authorship limit: all authors must be students. Graduate student submissions need to be single-authored (following requirements for the ACM Student Research Competition), but undergraduate team projects may have multiple student authors. For multiple-author submissions, one author must be designated to present the poster.
• Online submission: PCS Submission System
• Submission format: an abstract using ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column), poster, and proof of student status. Both poster and abstract submissions must accessibility requirements.

Selection Process

Juried

Chairs

Jasmine Jones, Can Liu
studentresearch@chi2022.acm.org

At the Conference

For accepted submission, one of the authors will give a poster presentation to a set of judges. Based on the juried poster session, a group of students will advance to the next round and be invited to give a short talk. Please see the Information for Poster Presenters for poster requirements.

After the Conference

All accepted submissions will be published as CHI Extended Abstracts in the ACM Digital Library.

Highlights about the Student Research Competition

• We will be asking our reviewers to pay particular attention to the quality of the poster, including the appropriate level of detail and quality of graphic design. Remember that the poster design must meet the accessibility requirements of CHI 2022.
• We strongly encourage participation from undergraduate students – you are judged in a separate category from graduate students, so please submit your work!

Message from the Student Research Competition Chairs

The Student Research Competition (SRC) is a forum for undergraduate and graduate students to showcase their research, exchange ideas, and improve their communication skills while competing for prizes at CHI 2022. The CHI SRC competition is a branch of the ACM Student Research Competition which hosts similar competitions at other ACM conferences.

The Student Research Competition has the following goals:

• to give undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to share their research ideas and results at CHI in a special forum that provides visibility for their work
• to give students the opportunity to meet with and interact with CHI attendees to share ideas, gain new insights, and understand possible practical applications
• to give students an opportunity to sharpen their communication skills
• to provide detailed feedback to students about their research and presentation, from a panel of distinguished judges from industry and academia
• to recognize and reward outstanding student research

Eligibility and Guidelines:

• Participants must be students pursuing an academic degree at the time of initial submission.
• The contest has two categories, one for undergraduate research and the other for graduate research. Research completed while the student was an undergraduate may be submitted to the undergraduate category even if the student is now a first-year graduate student.
• Each graduate-level competition entry must be authored by one student only – neither supervisors or other students are allowed as co-authors. Undergraduate students can submit research in teams.
• For work accepted to the CHI 2020 Student Research Competition, a travel grant of up to US $500 will be awarded to help cover travel expenses to the conference. While being an ACM is not mandatory to submit to the competition, the student must be an ACM member to qualify for travel funding and awards. Students from economically developing countries are eligible to apply for a Gary Marsden Travel Award as well. For a list of these countries, see: https://bit.ly/3tNEHV0
• Three winners will be selected in each category– undergraduate and graduate. The top three winners at CHI 2022 in each category (undergraduate and graduate) will receive prizes of US $500, US $300, and US $200, respectively. All winners will receive a medal and two-year complimentary ACM membership with a subscription to ACM’s Digital Library. Winners will be recognized during the closing plenary session of the CHI 2022 conference. The first-place winners will also go on to compete in the ACM grand finals with winners from other ACM conferences.

Preparing Your Student Research Competition Submission

A submission to the Student Research Competition should describe recently completed or ongoing student research in any of the topic areas covered by CHI. For undergraduate students, a group of undergraduate students who worked together on a project can submit the research with all their names on it, but all students must be undergraduates and the faculty advisor cannot be listed as an author. Graduate student submissions must be single author– even if the research was completed under the supervision of a supervisor, the submission must be authored by the graduate student alone. Submissions should be original work that is neither in submission elsewhere nor already published in CHI or another conference or journal. Abstracts should describe:

• The research problem and motivation for the work
• Background and related work
• Novelty of the research
• Research approach
• Results
• Contributions to the field of HCI

To submit:

• Submit an abstract and a poster to the Student Research Competition category via the Precision conference submission system:
  • the abstract must be a maximum length of 6 pages, including references.
  • the poster design must be reduced to one standard letter page in size and submitted in PDF format. (The file can be no larger than 4 megabytes.)
• Submit proof of student status by sending a note signed by your academic supervisor verifying all of the following information:
  • your university
  • whether you were a graduate (i.e., Master or PhD level) or undergraduate (i.e., Bachelor level) when the work was done
  • proof confirming that you are currently registered in an academic program full-time: Participants must be students pursuing an academic degree at the time of initial submission.

Selection Process for Student Research Competition

The Student Research Competition is a juried track for CHI 2022. Juried content is reviewed by a jury of experts that will evaluate the work based on its overall quality, originality, and relevance to the CHI community. While not considered archival, Student Research Competition abstracts will be archived in the ACM Digital Library. Publishing in the Student Research Competition will not constrain future submissions. Your abstract and poster are not considered to be a prior publication of the work for the purposes of a future CHI Paper or for a journal publication. Submissions will be evaluated based on:

• Quality of work
• Novelty of approach
• Significance of the contribution to the field of HCI
• Clarity of written presentation
• Quality of visual and oral presentation (poster)

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Confidentiality of submissions is maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference or the release of conference abstracts in the ACM Digital Library, with the exception of title and author information which will be published on the website prior to the conference. Submissions should not contain sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time.

Up to twenty-five submissions in total will be chosen to participate in the competition at CHI 2022.

Upon Acceptance of Your Student Research Competition

Authors of all accepted submissions will receive instructions on how to submit the publication-ready copy of their abstract. Deadline and instructions regarding publication-ready submissions are emailed to accepted authors. This email will also contain instructions of how to notify the Student Research Competition and Accessibility Chairs of any necessary accommodations. Authors will also receive instructions by email about poster design for presentation at the conference.

A travel grant covering expenses for travel to CHI, including conference registration, transportation, lodging, and meals, up to a limit of US $500 will be provided to each student whose submission was accepted to the Student Research Competition. In case of multiple authors, a maximum of two travel grants per submission will be granted. Students from economically developing countries are eligible to apply for a Gary Marsden Travel Award as well. For a list of these countries, see: https://bit.ly/3tNEHV0.

At the Conference

The first round of the competition evaluates the research during a poster presentation at CHI. The presentation will be evaluated on two dimensions, given equal weight: (1) the presentation of the research, including visual aspects of the poster and the student’s verbal discussion, and (2) the research, specifically its quality, novelty, and significance of the contribution. Based on the results from the poster session, the judges will select students to advance to the second round. During the second round, students will have the opportunity to give a short presentation of their research (10 minutes) followed by a question and answer session (5 minutes), which will be evaluated by a panel of judges. Winners will be announced during the closing plenary.

Due to the (potentially) hybrid nature of the conference, allowances will be made for authors who cannot attend in person and for presenting the work online for remote attendees. Such allowances will be necessarily bespoke (e.g., a remote presentation or video demo) and subject to available resources. While every attempt at fairness will be made, the hybrid nature of the conference will naturally make it challenging to compare finalists. The organizers will do their best to create an inclusive and engaging experience for all participants.

Competition Judges

A distinguished panel of judges from across the CHI community will be convened to discuss finalists presentations and select the finalist.

After the Conference

The first-place winners from each category will advance to the ACM Grand Finals of the Student Research Competition where the winners of several ACM conferences compete for more prizes and recognition. Accepted Student Research Competition abstracts will be distributed in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts. They will be placed in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide.

If, when submitting to this venue, you detect a conflict of interest with one of its program committee members, contact the chairs. Should you have a conflict with the venue chairs themselves, contact the technical program chairs (tpc@chi2022.acm.org).