Young Researcher Consortium

Come and get involved! Go to conference system and submit your contribution.

“The Next Generation of Assistive Technology and eAccessibility Experts”

The Young Researchers Consortium (YRC) will be organised to take place during the pre conference sessions. Supervisors of e.g. diploma, PhD thesis, practical work in companies focusing on or related to the field of Assistive Technology (AT) and eInclusion should motivate and support outstanding students to take part.

Idea and Goal

Ensuring that AT  is a stable and recognised R&D field requires identifying and supporting the next generation of experts in our field.  ICCHP is dedicated to this goal and invites young researchers to take part in the ICCHP Young Researchers Consortium.

The aim of this Consortium is to reach out and engage with young researchers who are starting out in the AT field to encourage a long-term commitment to AT research.

The Consortium will take place during the pre-conference session.  We ask supervisors of outstanding students' work (at both undergraduate and postgraduate level) to invite them to submit an extended abstract for consideration for the consortium.

Objectives

  • To allow young researchers to learn from experienced researchers in the field. The aim is to give the young researchers an understanding of both the history and the breadth of research in  AT. This will be achieved through presentations and hands-on workshops given by experienced researchers and also by focused interaction between the experienced and the young researchers.
  • To allow young researchers to present their research work and to receive constructive criticism from both experienced researchers and their peers. This will be achieved by each participant giving a short presentation his/her current work. Presentations will be reviewed in small workshop groups led by experienced researchers. The best contributions will be invited to present in a plenary session of ICCHP.
  • To allow young researchers to discuss the future of AT research by identifying trends and hot topics in the area -- in effect to suggest an agenda for the AT research community for the next 10 years. This will be achieved by group workshops that examine future trends in AT.
  • To enable young researchers who present particularly significant work in having it published in the "Technology and Disability" journal (http://www.iospress.nl/loadtop/load.php?isbn=10554181) (IOS Press), be it in a special ICCHP issue with other selected papers of the conference or in one of the journal issues as stand alone contributions. The YRC chairs might also consider to publish an own publication.

When

The workshop will be organized as a 2 days workshop, starting on Monday 7th of July 2014 in the morning.

We want to encourage all participants to attend also the main ICCHP conference. We will try to keep the group together to have further dicussions on selected topics and meetings with interesting persons.

Who should take part

Young researchers will typically be under 30 years of age and tackling their first or second major AT research or development project. They may be based in universities, research institutes, companies or other organizations.

PLEASE NOTE: Submissions to the YRC should be considerably different than work submitted to the main ICCHP conference.

Consortium Chairs

  • Dominique Archambault, Université ParisVIII, France
  • Deb Fels, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
  • Stanley Lam, Project:Possibility, USA
  • Makoto Kobayashi, Tsukuba University of Technology, Japan (co-chair)
  • Alex Mihailidis, University of Toronto, Canada
  • Martin Morandell, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Austria (chair)
  • Enrico Pontelli, New Mexico State University, USA
  • Barbara Prazak-Aram, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Austria
  • Gerhard Weber, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
  • Gottfried Zimmermann, Stuttgart Media University, Germany

Support

ICCHP will cover accommodation costs up to 5 nights in Café Hotel de l'Avenir, Saint-Ouen of up to 16 selected young researchers. The participation to the ICCHP main conference is for free for YRC participants. We expect young researchers or their supervising or employing institutes to support travel costs.

Applying for YRC

Extended abstracts on the work should be submitted till April 15, 2014.

Please use the general submission form for ICCHP at:
ICCHP Conference Tool
and indicate "Young Researcher" as the category you submit to. Submission should include (in one zipped file):

  • The extended abstracts (2-4 A4 pages)
  • A recommendation letter by the supervisor
  • A short CV
  • A discription about your current state of your work

Download the guide for preparing a YRC application (docx).

Publication of the work is subject to the decision of the panel of chairs. Publication is only possible after the conference.

Notifcation of acceptance is due at May 15, 2014.

Programme

Based on the review, up to 16 presentations by students will be given at the consortium. Additional inputs will be given or organised by members of the chair panel.

The concept of the consortium is to enable discussion and advice. Due to this, for those selected, participation in the whole programme is obligatory!