Important Dates
Submission Deadline: Monday, March 23, 2026
Author Notification: Friday, May 11, 2026
Camera Ready Deadline: Friday May 25, 2026
Doctoral Consortium: Monday August 17, 2026
(all times are 23:59 Anywhere On Earth, UTC-12)
Students are invited to apply for admission to the doctoral consortium at the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 conference in Bremen, Germany. The conference will take place on August 15-21, 2026, and the doctoral consortium will be held on Monday, August 17, 2026.
The doctoral consortium allows PhD students to discuss their research interests and career objectives with established researchers in AI, network with other participants, and receive mentoring about their research interests and career planning/options. It will expose students to different areas of research within AI and help build professional connections within the international community of AI researchers.
Application and Submission Instructions
Applicants should submit (as a single PDF file) the following:
1. A two-page extended abstract that summarizes the applicant’s research. The extended abstract must be formatted using the IJCAI two-column format (downloadable here: https://www.ijcai.org/authors_kit) and is strictly limited to 2 pages, including references. Submissions are not double-blind, which means the author’s name and affiliation should be included. When writing the extended abstract, remember that the audience is knowledgeable about AI but not necessarily about the specific topic of your research. Be sure to introduce the content at a level that the general IJCAI audience can understand, while describing technical details with enough specifics for experts to understand your contributions. Accepted extended abstracts will be published in the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 Proceedings and will be presented at the doctoral consortium. Concretely, a good extended abstract will:
- Clearly present the research problem and motivation.
- Summarize specific contributions made by the student and directions for future work.
- Distinguish your research from the current state-of-the-art in terms of novelty and innovation.
- Describe an analysis or evaluation plan that demonstrates the soundness of your approach.
- Describe possible impacts of the research (e.g., impact to specific fields of study, enabled applications, potential for misuse, societal impact, other ethical considerations).
- If applicable, describe plans to address ethical concerns that may arise during the course of the research itself (e.g., responsible data collection/use/annotation, protection of human subject rights and privacy).
2. A curriculum vitae (2 pages) with background (name, university), education (degree sought, year/status in degree, previous degrees), employment, and relevant experience in research (publications, presentations, conferences attended, etc.).
3. A personal statement (1-2 pages) that answers the following questions:
- What papers have influenced your work? Indicate (cite) two favorite papers and briefly describe the impact they have had on your work.
- Who do you suggest would be a good mentor for you? Please list at least three mentor suggestions (may be chosen from the list of PCs, SPCs, or ACs – in this year and past – of IJCAI and related conferences). The list of PCs, SPCs, and ACs for IJCAI can be found on current and previous IJCAI conference webpages.
- What do you expect to learn/gain from attending the DC?
- Have you attended the IJCAI DC previously? If not, have you attended DC at other conferences? Please say which one(s) and what was most useful to you.
- Have you submitted a paper to the main IJCAI-ECAI 2026 conference? If so, what is the title of the paper?
- When do you expect to graduate? What type of job do you desire after graduation (research, teaching, development, etc.), and what do you envision doing for the next five years after graduation?
4. Finally, we require a short supporting letter from your supervisor/professor. This letter is to be sent to dc@2026.ijcai.org via email, by the supervisor/professor, with the subject “IJCAI-ECAI 2026: Recommendation Letter for [StudentFirstName StudentLastName]”. Please note that the reference letters should only be submitted in PDF format and must be on university letterhead.
Note: Also, for the application to be considered, all parts of the application, including reference letters, must be submitted by the submission deadline. Incomplete applications will be desk rejected.
Doctoral consortium applications can be submitted via https://chairingtool.com/conferences/IJCAIECAI2026/doctoral-consortium
The selection process will consider the submitted applications’ quality and the applicants’ progress.
Travel Support
All students, including DC applicants, can apply for travel grants separately on the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 website. A limited number of travel grants will be available. Students from US institutions whose applications are selected for presentation will be eligible for NSF-funded partial travel support.
Enquiries
Please send all enquiries about the DC program to the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 Doctoral Consortium co-chairs:
- Leilani Gilpin (University of California Santa Cruz)
- Maria Chang (IBM Research)
- Vlad Ryzhikov (Birkbeck, University of London)
at the following address: dc@2026.ijcai.org