Call for Student Research Competition Submissions

The Student Research Competition (SRC) at PLDI allows students to present their research and get feedback from prominent members of the programming language research community. It’s an opportunity for students to network, practice presentation skills, and showcase their work. PLDI invites students (both at the graduate and undergraduate level) to submit their research.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, PLDI 2021 will be entirely virtual. While we will miss seeing our friends and colleagues in person, this creates a unique opportunity for student participation! Students with accepted SRC submissions need only cover the nominal PLDI registration fee and have an up-to-date ACM student membership to attend. There are no travel costs or visa requirements. We highly encourage students to take advantage of this opportunity!

Submitting

The main body of the submission is a title and extended abstract consisting of 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 in the context of PLDI areas of interest. 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 addressing the problem and clearly state how your approach is novel.

Results and Contributions: Clearly show how the results of your work contribute to programming language design and implementation in particular and to computer science in general; explain the significance of those results.

The final submission must also include the student author’s name, email address, institutional affiliation, research advisor’s name(s), ACM student member number, and category (undergraduate or graduate). We recommend including all this information in the standard author contact information region.

Submissions must be original research that is not already published at PLDI or another conference or journal. One of the goals of the SRC is to give students feedback on ongoing, unpublished work. Furthermore, the abstract 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.

The extended abstract must not exceed 1000 words and must not be longer than 2 pages. Reference lists do not count towards these limits.

When you’re ready, submit your extended abstract at the submission site: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=pldi2021src

Presentation and Attendance: Students accepted to the SRC based on their extended abstracts will proceed to the Poster Round. For the Poster Round, students design a research poster to present at PLDI. In this year’s virtual PLDI, this will mean spending a few hours in a virtual poster session, speaking with interested PLDI attendees about their work. We will do our best to accommodate the wide variety of time zones, and we are committed to making this event available to students around the world. The top three undergraduate participants and the top three graduate participants then proceed to the Presentation Round, in which they give short research talks and answer audience questions.

Good luck, and we hope to (virtually) see you in June!

2021 PLDI SRC Winners

Graduate Track:

1. Gold: “Smaller and More Secure: Static Debloating of MIPS Firmware Shared Libraries” by Haotian Zhang
2. Silver: “The Benefits and Costs of Using Fat Pointers for Temporal Memory Safety” by Jie Zhou
3. Bronze: “Novel Hardware Design Variation through Feature-Oriented Programming” by Justin Deters

Undergraduate Track:

• Gold: “Faster and Worst-Case Optimal E-matching via Reduction to Conjunctive Queries” by Yihong Zhang
• Gold: “Virtualizing Existing Fluidic Programs” by Caleb Winston

The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC), sponsored by Microsoft Research, offers a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research on programming language design, implementation, theory, applications, and performance at PLDI 2021. The goal is to give students a place to discuss their research with experts in their field and to help them sharpen their research and communication skills.

Rounds

Three rounds of competition will take place before and during PLDI 2021. All rounds are held in two categories: Undergraduate Students and Graduate Students. (Master’s and Ph.D. students both participate in the Graduate category.) Winners of the third round will be invited to participate in the SRC Grand Finals competition hosted by the ACM. The PLDI rounds are:

• Extended abstract round. Students at the undergraduate and graduate level are encouraged to submit an extended abstract outlining their research.

• Poster session. Based on the abstracts, a panel of judges will select the most promising authors to participate in the poster session, which will take place at PLDI. In the poster session, students will have the opportunity to present their work to the judges, who will select a group of semi-finalists in each category to advance to the next round. Because PLDI is virtual this year, the poster session will also be virtual. The exact format will be finalized closer to the event, but we will provide a rich environment for students from around the world to engage with each other and with senior experts in the field.

• PLDI presentation. The last round consists of a short oral presentation at the conference, to compete for the three top places.

Eligibility criteria

Participants must have current student status, either graduate or undergraduate, at the time of the submission deadline. Participants in the SRC must also be current ACM (student) members.

SRC Submissions

PLDI invites students to participate in the Student Research Competition in order to present their research and get feedback from prominent members of the programming language research community.

Each submission should include the student author’s name and email address; institutional affiliation; 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 in the context of PLDI areas of interest. 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 addressing the problem and clearly state how your approach is novel.

Results and Contributions: Clearly show how the results of your work contribute to programming language design and implementation in particular and to computer science in general; explain the significance of those results.

Submissions must be original research that is not already published at PLDI or another conference or journal. One of the goals of the SRC is to give students feedback on ongoing, unpublished work. Furthermore, the abstract 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.

The extended abstract must not exceed 1,000 words and must not be longer than 2 pages. Reference lists do not count towards these limits.

For more details, see the “Call for Student Research Competition Submissions” tab above.

Resources

• How to Write Papers and Give Talks that People Can Follow by Derek Dreyer
• How to Write a Conference Talk by Mike Hicks

Prizes

Winners of the three top places in each category receive prizes of $500 for the first place winner, $300 for the second place winner and $200 for the third place winner, respectively.

The top three undergraduate and graduate winners receive an award medal and a one-year complimentary ACM student membership with a subscription to ACM’s Digital Library.

ACM SRC Grand Finals

First place winners in each category will be invited to participate in the ACM SRC Grand Finals, an online round of competition between first-place SRC winners from different ACM conferences held in 2021. Grand Finals will be judged by an ACM-appointed panel of judges.

Winners of the three top Grand Finals places in each category will receive additional prizes of $500 for the first place winner, $300 for the second place winner and $200 for the third place winner, respectively. They will be also invited to the annual ACM Award Banquet along with prestigious ACM award winners, including the winner of the Turing Award.

2021 PLDI SRC Winners

Graduate Track:

1. Gold: “Smaller and More Secure: Static Debloating of MIPS Firmware Shared Libraries” by Haotian Zhang
2. Silver: “The Benefits and Costs of Using Fat Pointers for Temporal Memory Safety” by Jie Zhou
3. Bronze: “Novel Hardware Design Variation through Feature-Oriented Programming” by Justin Deters

Undergraduate Track:

• Gold: “Faster and Worst-Case Optimal E-matching via Reduction to Conjunctive Queries” by Yihong Zhang
• Gold: “Virtualizing Existing Fluidic Programs” by Caleb Winston

The Student Research Competition (SRC) at PLDI allows students to present their research and get feedback from prominent members of the programming language research community. It’s an opportunity for students to network, practice presentation skills, and showcase their work. PLDI invites students (both at the graduate and undergraduate level) to submit their research.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, PLDI 2021 will be entirely virtual. While we will miss seeing our friends and colleagues in person, this creates a unique opportunity for student participation! Students with accepted SRC submissions need only cover the nominal PLDI registration fee and have an up-to-date ACM student membership to attend. There are no travel costs or visa requirements. We highly encourage students to take advantage of this opportunity!

Submitting

The main body of the submission is a title and extended abstract consisting of 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 in the context of PLDI areas of interest. 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 addressing the problem and clearly state how your approach is novel.

Results and Contributions: Clearly show how the results of your work contribute to programming language design and implementation in particular and to computer science in general; explain the significance of those results.

The final submission must also include the student author’s name, email address, institutional affiliation, research advisor’s name(s), ACM student member number, and category (undergraduate or graduate).

Submissions must be original research that is not already published at PLDI or another conference or journal. One of the goals of the SRC is to give students feedback on ongoing, unpublished work. Furthermore, the abstract 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.

Please use the ACM Conference Proceedings Template found here https://www.overleaf.com/read/yggzbgjwjntv with line numbers turned on.

The extended abstract must not exceed 1,000 words and must not be longer than 2 pages. Reference lists do not count towards these limits.

Once you’re ready, submit your document at the submission site: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=pldi2021src

Presentation and Attendance: Students accepted to the SRC based on their extended abstracts will proceed to the Poster Round. For the Poster Round, students design a research poster to present at PLDI. In this year’s virtual PLDI, this will mean spending a few hours in a virtual poster session, speaking with interested PLDI attendees about their work. We will do our best to accommodate the wide variety of time zones, and we are committed to making this event available to students around the world. The top three undergraduate participants and the top three graduate participants then proceed to the Presentation Round, in which they give short research talks and answer audience questions.

Good luck, and we hope to (virtually) see you in June!