Student Research CompetitionPOPL 2018

Overview

POPL 2018 will again host an ACM Student Research Competition, where undergraduate and graduate students can present their original research before a panel of judges and conference attendees. This year’s competition will consist of three rounds:

• Extended abstract round: All students are encouraged to submit an extended abstract outlining their research (up to two pages).

• Poster session at POPL 2018: Based on the abstracts, a panel of judges will select the most promising entrants to participate in a poster session which will take place at the conference. Students who make it to this round will be eligible for up to $500 of travel support to attend the conference. In the poster session, students will have the opportunity to present their work to the judges and conference attendees, who will select three finalists in each category (graduate/undergraduate) to advance to the next round.

• POPL presentation: The last round will consist of an oral presentation at POPL to compete for the final awards in each category. This round will also select an overall winner who will advance to the ACM SRC Grand Finals.

Transport of your poster

You will be responsible for transporting your poster to the conference. If this will be a problem, please contact the chair of the SRC at bendy@purdue.edu.

Prizes

• The top three graduate and the top three undergraduate winners will receive prizes of $500, $300, and $200, respectively.

• All six winners will receive award medals and a two-year complimentary ACM student membership, including a subscription to ACM’s Digital Library.

• The names of the winners will be posted on the SRC web site.

• The first place winners of the SRC will be invited to participate in the ACM SRC Grand Finals, an on-line round of competitions among the winners of other conference-hosted SRCs.

• Grand Finalists and their advisors will be invited to the Annual ACM Awards Banquet for an all-expenses-paid trip, where they will be recognized for their accomplishments along with other prestigious ACM award winners, including the winner of the Turing Award (also known as the Nobel Prize of Computing).

• The top three Grand Finalists will receive an additional $500, $300, and $200. All Grand Finalists will receive Grand Finalist certificates.

• The ACM, Microsoft Research, and our industrial partners provide financial support for students attending the SRC. You can find more information about this on the ACM website.

Eligibility

The SRC is open to both undergraduate (not in a PhD program) and graduate students (in a PhD program). Upon submission, entrants must be enrolled as a student at their universities and be current ACM student members.

Furthermore, there are some constraints on what kind of work may be submitted:

Previously published work: Submissions should consist of original work (not yet accepted for publication). If the work is a continuation of previously published work, the submission should focus on the contribution over what has already been published. We encourage students to see this as an opportunity to get early feedback and exposure for the work they plan to submit to the next POPL.

Collaborative work: Graduate students are encouraged to submit work they have been conducting in collaboration with others, including advisors, internship mentors, or other students. However, graduate submissions are individual, so they must focus on the contributions of the student.

Team submissions: Team projects will be only accepted from undergrads. One person should be designated by the team to make the oral presentation. If a graduate (Masters or PhD program) student is part of a group research project and wishes to participate in an SRC, they can submit and present their individual contribution to the group research project.

Accepted Abstracts

Call for Submissions

Submission URL: https://poplsrc18.hotcrp.com/

Each submission (referred to as abstract below) should include the student author’s name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, and postal address; research advisor’s name; ACM student member number; category (undergraduate or graduate); research title; and an extended abstract addressing the following:

• Problem and Motivation: Clearly state the problem being addressed and explain the reasons for seeking a solution to this problem.

• Background and Related Work: Describe the specialized (but pertinent) background necessary to appreciate the work. Include references to the literature where appropriate, and briefly explain where your work departs from that done by others.

• Approach and Uniqueness: Describe your approach in attacking the problem and clearly state how your approach is novel.

• Results and Contributions: Clearly show how the results of your work contribute to computer science and explain the significance of those results.

The abstract must describe the student’s individual research and must be authored solely by the student. If the work is collaborative with others and/or part of a larger group project, the abstract should make clear what the student’s role was and should focus on that portion of the work. Abstracts should conform to the ACM article template, be in 10pt font, and be submitted in as a pdf. Submitted pdfs must not be longer than 2 pages. However, the reference list does not count towards this limit. To submit an abstract, please register through the HotCRP system (see the link above). Abstracts submitted after the deadline may be considered at the committee’s discretion, but only after decisions have been made on all abstracts submitted before the deadline.

Note on co-authorship : as per the ACM guidelines team submissions are only allowed for the undergrad category. Submissions in the ‘graduate’ category must be individual. In particular, the student’s advisor must not be a co-author but his/her name and affiliation must be filled in separately in the submission form.

If you have any problems or would like to clarify some concerns, don’t hesitate to contact the competition chair Benjamin Delaware.

Graduate Category

• First Place: Youyou Cong. Combining Control Operators and Dependent Types

• Second Place: Yanjun Wang. A Decidable Logic for Tree Data-Structures with Measurements

• Third Place: Abhinav Verma. Program Synthesis with Neural Oracles

Undergraduate Category

• First Place: Divesh Otwani. Finite Maps At The Type Level

• Second Place: Xinyue Zhang, Rachel Xu. Comparison among three program verification techniques in Dependent Haskell, Liquid Haskell and F*

• Third Place: William Kunkel. Comparing Liquid Haskell and Coq: Evaluating the Great Expectations of ‘A Tale of Two Provers’