Page last updated 5 Feb 97. Updated to Second Call for Papers and Participants. Added link to Koza's list of PhD, Masters, and Bachelors students working on GP-related areas. Added link to GP-97 camera-ready style info, GP-96 style files.

GP-97 PhD Student Workshop Call for Papers and Participants

Second Call for Participants and Poster Papers for GP- 97 PhD Student Workshop (Deadline: Wednesday, February 26, 1997)
Dated January 29, 1997
Deadline for Submissions: Wednesday, February 26, 1997.

This is a call for participants for a one-day PhD student workshop to be held on Saturday July 12, 1997 at Stanford University (just before the start of GP-97 conference on Sunday July 13).

The GP-97 PhD workshop is intended to give the presenting PhD students an opportunity to describe their ongoing research work to a faculty panel, other students, and other participants of the workshop. It is expected that there will be feedback on each presenter's current progress as well as suggestions and advice for future research directions from the faculty panel, other student presenters, and other attendees of the workshop. This call is the result of the recent discovery that there are around 50 theses involving genetic programming in the works at the present time.

The proposed GP-97 PhD workshop will bring together four distinct groups:

  1. A faculty panel, consisting of (at least) the following three faculty members who have agreed so far to participate if there is sufficient interest:
  2. Approximately 12 students selected as "presenters." These students will have been selected from among students submitting a one-page poster paper describing their thesis work involving genetic programming. The group of presenting students will be selected from the submissions on the basis of creating a diverse group of students working on a wide range of topic areas. In most cases, the presentations will be from students whose thesis topic has already approved by their university and who been working on their thesis for at least several months.
  3. Additional students (PhD, masters, bachelors) who may be working on, or planning to work on, a thesis involving genetic programming at the PhD, masters, or bachelors level.
  4. Other interested GP-97 conference attendees (including both students or non-students).
The details of the workshop are unsettled at this time, but based on the number and mix of submissions. The workshop will probably be run along approximately the following lines: The workshop will consist of 4 successive 1/2 hour segments, each consisting of a group of 3 short presentations (probably about 15 minutes each, totaling 45 minutes) followed by about 45 minutes of questions, comments, and suggestions from the faculty panel and the audience. The 4 successive 1 1/2 hour segments during the day would cover the 12 presenting students. In general, the workshop would be patterned along the lines of the PhD workshop held in summer 1996 by the AAAI in Portland, Oregon. The intent is to keep the workshop fairly small, so attendance may be limited to students who submitted a one-page poster paper (whether or not they were selected as presenters) and/or other students working on PhD, masters, bachelors theses.

The deadline for arrival of submissions is Wednesday, February 26, 1997. Students interested in presenting their work at the workshop should submit 5 physical copies of a one-page camera-ready paper in the style of a poster paper briefly describing their work and any existing intermediate results of their research. The paper should follow the style for papers for camera-ready papers for GP-97 (PostScript document). The substantially similar style used for GP-96 is also acceptable. Samples of the GP-96 style may be found in the l996 conference proceedings book, and GP-96 style files for LaTeX and Word for Windows 6 are on-line.

It is anticipated that most or all the one-page papers submitted by students who participate in the workshop will be printed either in the GP-97 conference proceedings book or the GP-97 late-breaking papers book (depending on not-yet-settled timing and logistics). Submissions should be sent to

GP-97 PhD Workshop
c/o American Association for Artificial Intelligence
445 Burgess Drive
Menlo Park, CA 94025
No e-mail or fax submissions allowed.

Selection of the presenting students and final decisions concerning the workshop will be made shortly after submission. It is anticipated that at least some of the one-page submissions will require revisions and a second deadline will be subsequently announced for the revised versions. It should be noted that this submission is entirely separate from the submission of papers for the GP-97 conference. The subject of this one-page poster is to be the subject of the student's PhD thesis. This may or may not be the same as any paper submitted to the GP-97 conference.

The workshop has been scheduled to occur on the day before the regular GP-97 conference to allow students to meet each other and encourage subsequent meetings with their fellow students, if they so choose, during the conference.

In addition to the activity at the workshop, at some point during the regular GP-97 conference as a whole (perhaps for 2 hours on Monday afternoon July 14), there will be one parallel track of the regular GP-97 conference provided so that the 12 presenting students can give very brief 10-minute thumbnail sketches of their work. These presentations will give the presenting students an opportunity to present their work to the larger conference audience and will allow attendees of the GP-97 conference to learn about this ongoing PhD research work.

John Koza's list of students writing PhD, Masters, or Bachelor's Theses involving Genetic Programming.
GP-97: back to the main page
This page maintained by Patrick Tufts