We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this CFP. We would appreciate your help in forwarding this call to colleagues who may be interested. ********************** SmartComp2026 PhD Forum Call for Contributions ************************************** The Ph.D. Forum at SmartComp 2026 provides an excellent opportunity for Ph.D. students to present their work in progress to the scientific community and obtain individual feedback from leading researchers in the field. This forum is intended to provide doctoral students with a platform to interact with established researchers from both academia and industry and get useful guidance on the broader impacts of their research. https://smartcomp2026.unime.it/call-phd-forum/ ***PhD Forum Format*** The Forum will be organized as a workshop co-located with SmartComp. In addition, the Forum will be supplemented by a one-minute-madness session plus a poster session during the main conference, to facilitate extended interaction opportunities between Ph.D. student participants and researchers from academia, industry, and government. During the workshop, senior members of the community will be present to provide constructive technical comments to each attendee. The Forum will provide a working environment for students to refine and practice their presentations, helping them improve communication skills, and to collaboratively develop research ideas for the PhD research and beyond. Special recognition will be given to the most innovative and/or most promising research project(s) presented at the Ph.D. Forum based on the pitch talk, the presented poster, and the discussion with the participants during the poster session. Current Ph.D. students at any stage of their career are encouraged to submit a 3-page extended abstract about their research. Submissions are expected to include motivation of the importance and challenges to the particular problem, and initial results that support either the importance of the research problem or viability of solutions. The abstract should include the author’s name, affiliation and email address. The name of the supervisor should be marked (“supervised by …”) on the paper, under the author’s name. Authors of accepted submissions are expected to participate in-person. The proceedings of the Forum will be included in the proceedings of the main conference. ***Submission Guidelines*** Submissions must be in PDF format, be no more than three pages in length (all included) and adhere to the IEEE two-column conference format (the same format used for paper submissions to SmartComp2026). All manuscripts must be registered and submitted through the EDAS Submission Site at the following link: https://edas.info/N34458 ***Participation*** Authors of accepted submissions are expected to participate in the Ph.D. Forum (a half-day workshop immediately prior to the main conference), and to deliver an elevator pitch and A1 poster presentation for their work during the main program of the SmartComp2026 conference. Participants who are current full-time students are eligible for the student registration fee. However, please note that any other publication in SmartComp—including main conference papers, posters, demos, workshop papers, or work-in-progress submissions—requires at least one author to register at the full rate. If a student planning to attend the PhD Forum is also a co-author of any such publication, and no other co-author is registering at the full rate, the student must register at the full rate and is not eligible for the student rate. Some students will also be able to apply for travel grants (when details are available, they will be published on the SmartComp website). ***Important Dates*** - Submission: 15th April 2026 - Acceptance notification: 20th April 2026 - Camera ready: 30th April 2026 SMARTCOMP 2026 PhD Forum Chairs - Franca Delmastro, IIT-CNR, Italy - Simone Silvestri, University of Kentucky, USA We look forward to your submissions and to welcoming you in Messina, Italy, in June 2026! Sincerely, --------- Haruki Yonekura Publicity and Social Media Co-Chair, IEEE SMARTCOMP 2026 https://smartcomp2026.unime.it/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/ieee-smartcomp/ Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Osaka, Japan Mobile Computing Laboratory