Students are invited to apply for admission to the doctoral consortium at the IJCAI 2025 conference in Montreal, Canada. The conference will take place on August 16-27, 2025, and the doctoral consortium will be held on Monday, August 18, 2025.
The doctoral consortium allows PhD students to discuss their research interests and career objectives with established researchers in AI, network with other participants, and receive mentoring about their research interests and career planning/options. It will expose students to different areas of research within AI and help build professional connections within the international community of AI researchers.
Application and Submission Instructions
Applicants should submit (as a single PDF file) the following:
1. A two-page extended abstract that summarizes the applicant’s research. The extended abstract must be formatted using the IJCAI two-column format (downloadable here: https://www.ijcai.org/authors_kit) and is strictly limited to 2 pages, including references. Submissions are not double-blind, which means the author’s name and affiliation should be included. When writing the extended abstract, remember that the audience is knowledgeable about AI but not necessarily about the specific topic of your research. Be sure to introduce the content at a level that the general IJCAI 2025 audience can understand, while describing technical details with enough specifics for experts to understand your contributions. Accepted extended abstracts will be published in the IJCAI 2025 Proceedings and will be presented at the doctoral consortium. Concretely, a good extended abstract will:
- Clearly present the research problem and motivation
- Summarize specific contributions made by the student and directions for future work
- Distinguish your research from the current state-of-the-art in terms of novelty and innovation
- Describe an analysis or evaluation plan that demonstrates the soundness of your approach
- Describe possible impacts of the research (e.g., impact to specific fields of study, enabled applications, potential for misuse, societal impact, other ethical considerations)
- If applicable, describe plans to address ethical concerns that may arise during the course of the research itself (e.g. responsible data collection/use/annotation, protection of human subject rights and privacy)
2. A curriculum vitae (2 pages) with background (name, university), education (degree sought, year/status in degree, previous degrees), employment, and relevant experience in research (publications, presentations, conferences attended, etc.).
3. A personal statement (1-2 pages) answers the following questions:
- What papers have influenced your work? Indicate (cite) two favorite papers and briefly describe the impact they have had on your work.
- Who do you suggest would be a good mentor for you? Please list at least three mentor suggestions (may be chosen from the list of PCs, SPCs, or ACs – in this year and past – of IJCAI and related conferences). The list of PCs, SPCs, and ACs for IJCAI can be found on current and previous IJCAI conference webpages.
- What do you expect to learn/gain from attending the DC?
- Have you attended the IJCAI DC previously? If not, have you attended DC at other conferences? Please say which one(s) and what was most useful to you.
- Have you submitted a paper to the main IJCAI 2025 conference? If so, what is the title of the paper?
- When do you expect to graduate? What type of job do you desire after graduation (research, teaching, development, etc.), and what do you envision doing for the next five years after graduation?
4. Finally, we require a short supporting letter from your supervisor/professor. This letter is to be sent to dc@2025.ijcai.org via email, by the supervisor/professor, with the subject “IJCAI 2025: Recommendation Letter for [StudentFirstName StudentLastName]”
Doctoral consortium applications can be submitted via https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/IJCAI2025/Submission/Index by choosing “Doctoral consortium” in the drop-down menu.
The selection process will consider the submitted applications’ quality and the applicants’ progress.
All students, including DC applicants, can apply for travel grants separately on the IJCAI 2025 website. A limited number of travel grants will be available.
Important Dates
- Submission Deadline: Friday March 7, 2025 (23:59 UTC-12 or Anywhere on Earth (AOE)) Author Notification: Friday May 2, 2025 (23:59 UTC-12 or Anywhere on Earth (AOE))
- Camera Ready Deadline: Friday May 23, 2025 (23:59 UTC-12 or Anywhere on Earth (AOE))
- Doctoral Consortium: Monday August 18, 2025
Enquiries
Please send all enquiries about the DC program to the IJCAI 2025 Doctoral Consortium co-chairs:
- Anita Raja (City University of New York, United States)
- Maria Chang (IBM Research)
at the following address: dc@2025.ijcai.org