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Application Information

Interested Ph.D. students and postdocs are encouraged to apply. Applicants must submit (1) a 2-page research statement describing the applicant’s past and future research, (2) a short statement of motivation, and (3) a CV. Each applicant will be asked to review 2-3 submitted research statements from peers in a double-blind process. Acceptance decisions will be made based on peer reviews and an additional review from an existing faculty member. The quality of submitted reviews may also be evaluated by the program committee.

Applications are due February 16, 2020 (23:59 Pacific Time). Submissions are now closed.

Application Content

1. Research Statement

A research statement is a high-level description of the research problem that the applicant is addressing in his/her current and future studies. There is no need to include an abstract section given the page limit. The research statement should include:

  • The motivation of the research question in the applicant's studies,
  • A clear problem statement,
  • A short review about other researchers' work on the research question,
  • A description of approaches contributed by the applicant, their novelty and potential advantages over existing ones.

You can find many good resources for writing a research statement online (such as this).

The research statement should be anonymized according to RSS standards and those that are not anonymized will not be reviewed. Other application materials do not need to be anonymized because they will not go out for peer review.

The main content of the research statement should be no longer than 2 pages. Anything on the third page or beyond must be only references. Submissions should be in PDF format and use the RSS LaTeX or Word templates.

Submissions that do not conform with anonymization and page limit standards will be desk rejected.

2. Statement of Motivation

A statement of motivation should answer the following question: "why do you want to participate in this workshop, and what do you hope to gain from it?"

Statements of motivation should be no longer than 250 words. These can be submitted as PDF or .txt files as "supplementary documents" in the submission system.

3. Curriculum Vitae

An updated CV should be submitted as PDF files as "supplementary documents."

4. Peer Review

The applicant is required to submit 2-3 peer reviews of other submitted research statements. The research statements for review will be assigned to applicants after the submission deadline.

Submission instructions

Please log in or create an account at cmt3.research.microsoft.com/RSSPW2020 and submit: (1) your anonymized research statement (2 pages excluding references), (2) your statement of motivation (250 words max.), and (3) your CV.

(2) and (3) should be uploaded as supplementary material. Please note that the link to upload supplementary material becomes active only after the paper submission is complete.

The research statement should be anonymized according to RSS standards and those that are not anonymized will not be reviewed. Other application materials do not need to be anonymized because they will not go out for peer review. We suggest that you refer to your past work in the first person (e.g., "Previously, we have done this...) but anonymize the bibliographic references associated with your past work (e.g., [1] Anonymous authors “title of the paper”).

Applications are due February 16, 2020 (23:59 Pacific Time).

Review Process

Research statements will be evaluated by the Program Committee, peers who have submitted to the workshop, and a senior (faculty) reviewer. It is expected that the peer review process provides applicants with valuable experience reviewing scientific research, an opportunity to learn about their peers' on-going work on relevant topics, and a way to gain diversified feedback about their own work.

Instructions for Peer Review

High quality reviews are used to help Program Committee members perform informed decisions and are also critical for the authors to figure out what works well and what needs improvement.

A review for RSS Pioneers should include the following:

  • A brief summary of the research contribution and its impact;
  • Strengths of the work;
  • Weaknesses of the work;
  • Overall recommendation.

Please remember that you are reviewing submissions from young researchers like you. Constructive reviews with a scholarly tone are highly encouraged. The review guidelines that are developed for RSS 2017 can be a useful read before you commence the reviewing work.

We expect the highest standards of ethical conduct, including being as fair as possible in the review, and not attempting to bypass the double blind process by any means.