[agents] Call for IFAAMAS-10 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award nominations

[AAMAS Publicity]

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Call for IFAAMAS-10 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award
nomination
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Nominations are invited for the 2010 Victor Lesser Distinguished
Dissertation Award sponsored by IFAAMAS, the International Foundation
for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (http://www.ifaamas.org)
and to be presented at AAMAS-2011 (http://www.aamas2011.tw/).
Eligible doctoral dissertations are those defended between January 1, 2010 and
December 31, 2010 in the area of Autonomous Agents or Multiagent Systems.
This award includes a certificate signed by the IFAAMAS Chair and
a 1500EUR payment.

The selection of the dissertation will be based on the originality,
significance, and impact of the work. Evidence of such impact include
publications at highly selective conferences  and journals in the
field with due importance given to AAMAS conferece series and
JAAMAS. Research output that resulted primarily from the student's
initiative will be considered more favourably. The selection committee
will be the final arbiter in the decision process. The selection
committee might decide to consult external assessors and reserves the
right  to not award the prize if the nominations do not meet the
expected quality level.

The dissertation must be nominated by the thesis supervisor and
must be supported by the following documents (the documents must
be placed on a web page and only a link to this page e-mailed to the
chair of the selection committee, Sandip Sen, at
sandip at utulsa.edu on or before February 28, 2011):

A. A pdf file of the dissertation. If the dissertation is not written
in English, the nomination must include a substantial manuscript in
English, with the nominee as the first author, published in a journal
or a prestigious conference.

B. A list of citations to published papers based primarily on this
dissertation with links to corresponding pdf files.

C. A recommendation from the dissertation supervisor nominating the
dissertation for the IFAAMAS-10 Victor Lesser Distinguished
Dissertation Award. The recommendation should argue the merit of the
dissertation and highlight, where relevant, how the work resulted from
the initiative of the student. This document, not to exceed 500 words,
should also certify the eligibility of the PhD by asserting that the
PhD was defended in calendar year 2010.

D. The names, email addresses, and affiliations of at most three
referees, familiar with the research of the candidate and experts in
the pertinent research area, who will directly email their
recommendations for the candidate to the chair of the selection
committee.   It is the responsibility of the dissertation supervisor
to contact the referees and ensure that the letters are submitted by
the deadline.   A reference letter should be no more than 500 words
in length and should be on official letterhead, signed and emailed as
scanned pdf file.

Though the nomination is to be submitted by the nominee's dissertation
supervisor, it is assumed that the nominee has consented that the
dissertation be considered for this award and, if selected for the
award, commits to attend the AAMAS-2011 conference, where he/she will
receive the award, and give an hour-long presentation on this work in
a special session of the conference. The cost of attending the
conference is not covered by the award.

Selection committee:

Sandip Sen (Chair)
Elisabeth Andre
Ana Bazzan
Gal Kaminka
Hideyuki Nakashima