Student Research CompetitionPLDI 2023

Accepted Posters

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.

Over the past three years, we have explored various ways to make the Student Research Competition (SRC) accessible to a wider audience. Every format comes with its own set of pros and cons. In fully virtual conferences, we miss seeing our friends and colleagues in person; on the other hand, we also enjoy seeing more participation globally. At the same time, many have found that a hybrid format inhibits engagement from all participants (remote and in-person). Last year, we introduced the two-track format where we incorporated the positive components of a hybrid event (increased accessibility) while mitigating the negative components (limited engagement). This year, we will again use the same format and hope that it will continue to increase participation!

Two-Track SRC Model

This model comprises of two pools of submissions: (1) students who present their work primarily in-person, and (2) students who present their work primarily virtually. To aid with planning, students are strongly encouraged to select one of the tracks at submission time. We will do our best to accommodate any changes after submission.

Our hope is that the virtual track will allow more students to participate, regardless of travel restrictions or monetary constraints. However, we will note that virtual participants may have limited access to the rest of the conference depending on how the different programs are offered (e.g., if they are streamed or not). Thus, in-person attendees will likely be able to engage with the wider conference, and attendees, more fully.

Note that the selection criterion of the Student Research Competition is not dependent on the mode of presentation. All students will be evaluated according to the same criteria.

Submission

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 submissions are double blind (the uploaded PDFs should not have your name or any other identifying information). We do ask however that you include the student author’s name, email address, institutional affiliation, research advisor’s name(s), ACM student member number, category (undergraduate or graduate), and mode of presentation (in-person or virtual) in the standard author contact information region (under “additional notes” for any field that does not have a dedicated cell).

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://pldi23src.hotcrp.com/.

Should you have any questions on if your work is a good fit for the SRC track, please reach out to the SRC Co-Chairs.

Presentation and Attendance

Students accepted to the SRC based on their extended abstracts will proceed to the Poster (pre-Finale) Round. For the Poster Round, students must submit:

• a research poster to present at PLDI,
• a 5-minutes pre-recorded talk

In the two-track SRC model, the in-person track will be formatted as a traditional SRC: there will be an in-person poster session for three hours, in which PLDI attendees and in-person judges can walk around and interact with the students. The virtual track will be held in a virtual space that will be available to all PLDI attendees. In addition, we will have a pool of virtual judges that will walk around and interact with the virtual students.

The top three undergraduate participants and the top three graduate participants (selected across both the virtual and in-person tracks) will proceed to the Final Presentation Round. The final round of SRC will be conducted in a conference room where in-person finalists will first present (streamed over Zoom), and virtual finalists will present via Zoom. Both the virtual and in-person judges/attendees will get a chance to ask questions during the Q&A session after each talk.

Participation

The Student Research Competition (SRC) at PLDI has always strived to improve engagement and accessibility to students around the world. To this aim, we will provide the opportunity for a round of asynchronous peer-review discussions amongst the SRC participants. The peer-review process is an opportunity for the SRC speakers to share their feedback, ask questions to their fellow peers, and help them make improvements for the poster and presentation round. This is also an opportunity for in-person and virtual speakers to engage prior to the SRC poster round.

We hope to utilize our experiences over the last two years to enable sufficient engagement in both tracks. We will work to provide tooling support, organization, and publicity to ensure all participants have a positive experience.

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

2023 PLDI SRC Winners

Undergraduate Track

1. Gold: “An Eager SMT Solver for Algebraic Data Type Queries” by Amar Shah, University of California Berkeley
2. Silver: “Resource Sharing through Control-Flow based Optimizations” by Caleb Kim, Cornell University
3. Bronze: “A Synchronization Mechanism for An Accelerator Design IR” by Pai Li, Cornell University

Graduate Track

1. Gold: “Scaling Decision-Theoretic Probabilistic Programs Through Factorization” by Minsung Cho, Northeastern University
2. Silver: “Distributions for Compositionally Differentiating Parametric Discontinuities” by Jesse Michel, MIT
3. Bronze: “ConstraintFlow: A Declarative DSL for Certified Artificial Intelligence” by Avaljot Singh, UIUC

Congratulations to the winners!!

The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) 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 2023. 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.

Two-track Format

This year we will continue to use the two-track format from PLDI 2022 which encourages both in-person and remote participation. Please see the “Call for Student Research Competition Submissions” tab above for more details.

Rounds

Three rounds of competition will take place before and during PLDI 2023. 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. The exact format will be finalized closer to the event, but we plan to have two tracks: one virtual and one in-person. We hope to 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 (across both virtual and in-person participants), 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 (the PDF should be double-blind) 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 2023. 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.

As detailed on the Call for Student Research Competition Submissions, this year we will again use a two-track model, which encourages both in-person and remote participation. The remainder of this page describes the expected format of the extended abstract submission, which is the same regardless of the intended mode of participation (in-person or remote).

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 submissions are double blind (the uploaded PDFs should not have your name or any other identifying information). We do ask however that you include the student author’s name, email address, institutional affiliation, research advisor’s name(s), ACM student member number, category (undergraduate or graduate), and mode of presentation (in-person or virtual) in the standard author contact information region (under “additional notes” for any field that does not have a dedicated cell).

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: TBA

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

For the students who got accepted to the SRC, here are the requirements for the poster, video, and final presentation.

Poster Requirements

• Create a poster that can fit up to 3’ x 4’ dimensions.
• The content on your poster should be organized neatly and clearly.
• Choose colors of your choice but make sure it all aligns nicely.
• Submit the PDF of your posters to us by June 12th, 2023.
• Please print your own posters and bring them to the venue if you are presenting in person.
• We will provide easels to put the posters up.

Video Requirements

• Create a 5-minute prerecorded talk to describe your work.
• You can choose to give a walk-through with slides in your prerecorded talk.

Final Presentation Requirements

• The students who qualify for the final presentation round will be given 7 minutes to present their work, followed by a 4-minute Q&A session at the end of each talk.
• Prepare a slide deck for this round.

For the virtual attendees, we will conduct the poster session earlier in the day, separate from the in-person poster session. More information on the timing will be sent to those who are attending virtually later.

NOTE: There is only a single final presentation session. If virtual participants qualify for the final round, they will have to make sure they attend it at the same time.