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IPDPS 2026 PhD Forum Co-Chairs
Kamesh Madduri, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Ana Lucia Varbanescu, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Contact: phdforum@ipdps.org
Overview
The IPDPS 2026 PhD Forum welcomes current graduate students working toward a PhD in areas related to parallel and distributed processing. The PhD Forum gives graduate students an opportunity to present a research poster describing their doctoral research to the entire IPDPS conference audience. The program includes mentoring sessions designed to help students enhance their communication skills, gain valuable career planning insights, explore current research trends, and build professional connections.
The PhD Forum activities are scheduled so that the participating students can follow all the main scientific and social events of the conference. The PhD Forum is now open for submissions from all students, including authors of papers presented at the conference.
List of PhD Forum Candidates and Their Projects
Information for PhD Forum Poster Presenters
The posters should be at least 32x40 inches (or 80x100cm) – see below. Student presenters must prepare professional rolled up posters (we will not display a mosaic of small slides to post). The poster should preferably be printed with a high-quality device. The location for hanging the poster will be numbered using your PhD poster number in the program. Push pins or tape will be provided for mounting your poster. See poster guidelines at the end of this page.
All submissions and their respective posters are considered for the Best PhD Forum contribution, which will be decided and awarded by a jury of experts during the PhD pitches and PhD posters sessions.
Planned Program
Day |
Time |
Activity |
Wednesday |
Lunch break
(60 min) |
Intro Pitches
The students can present their thesis (using at most 1 content slide) and 3 minutes. These pitches session is open for the audience and jury. |
Thursday |
Lunch break
(60 min) |
A panel on research and career planning will include representatives from academia, research laboratories (non-industry), and industry. After a brief description from each panel member about what their job entails and why you might consider it, attendees are open to ask any questions to help guide what decision is the right one for them. While this is career focused, other topics, such as lifestyle and side effects of the career choices on their personal life are welcomed. |
Thursday |
6 to 7 pm |
Poster session
This is an open session with the audience and jury. The students will have the opportunity to discuss their posters and contributions with the general audience and the jury. |
Friday |
Morning |
Announcement of PhD Forum best pitch and poster winners |
Poster Guidelines
Some basic guidelines on how to organize your poster include:
- Relax, posters are intended to engage an interested person in conversation and then support that conversation.
- Posters should be no larger than an A0 paper size (841 x 1189 mm or 33.1 x 46.8 in). If it is horizontally structured, please still fit within the portrait dimensions specified (33.1 x 46.8 in max).
- Be sure the title and organizational affiliations are clear along the top.
- Consider the normal left-to-right, top-to-bottom reading order for English when organizing the contents. Multiple columns are perfectly acceptable
- Include a QR code to a website that includes the poster abstract and an electronic copy of the poster itself.
- If there are existing publications by the poster authors on the topic, these should be the only references.
- Balance the amount of graphics and text. A visitor should be able to get the high level view within 1 minute and decide if they want to engage you.
- Graphics should show structure and general measurements that illustrate the results.
- Text should explain things without large paragraphs explaining.
- Text should be large enough to easily read at 6 feet (2 meters) distance.
- Assume the viewer is somewhat to generally knowledgeable about the topic eliminating the need for long motivational passages.
- Provide sufficient motivational material to show at a glance the poster authors understand potential impact.
- Compensation for color blindness is important. Design for monochrome but add color to highlight.
Call for Submissions (closed)
We invite submissions of 2-page summaries of your doctoral research, including the problem statement, the research methodology being used, progress thus far, and planned future steps to complete the work. Submitters must still be enrolled in the doctoral program at the time of attending IPDPS 2026, and can only participate once in an IPDPS PhD Forum.
Please use single-spaced double-column pages using 10-point size font on 8.5x11-inch pages (IEEE conference style). References do not count toward the 2-page limit. References must be complete and include all author names for each reference cited. An appendix is allowed and the entire submission must not exceed 10 pages.
Our goal is to accept as many submissions as capacity allows, but the availability of our resources, as well as other screening factors, will limit the number of participants in the program. To be fair, we will accept submissions in two rounds. The deadline for the first round is March 20, with notifications by March 30. The deadline for the second round is April 13, with notification on April 20. We strongly encourage submissions in the first round, as the number of slots might be limited in the second round.
A selection committee of experts from the different IPDPS 2026 focus areas will review the applications together with the PhD Forum Co-Chairs. By submitting an application, the student is committing to prepare and attend the conference in order to present a poster, and to participate in the planned mentoring and networking opportunities. |
