2024 IKDD Doctoral Dissertation in Data Science Award: CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

2024 Award Winners

Winner

IKDD congratulates Sravanti Addepalli (IISc Bangalore) for enhancing the robustness of Deep Neural Networks against adversarial attacks and distribution shifts while addressing practical deployment challenges.

Runner-Up

IKDD congratulates Yatin Nandwani (IIT Delhi) for significant theoretical and empirical advancements in the space of deep learning with structured output constraints.

Runner-Up

IKDD congratulates Abhijeet Awasthi (IIT Bombay) for contributions to data-efficient NLP, including methods for efficient supervision, synthetic data generation and learning with limited labeled data.

This annual award launched by IKDD in 2022, recognizes the best doctoral dissertation(s) in the broad areas of Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Mining, Knowledge Discovery and applications of Data-driven techniques. The IKDD Doctoral Dissertation Award winner and (at most two) runners-up will be recognized at the annual CODS-COMAD conference, and their dissertations will be published on the IKDD Web site (https://ikdd.acm.org/). The award winner will receive a plaque and a cheque for INR 1,00,000. The runners-up will receive a plaque and a cheque of INR 50,000. The winner and runners-up will also receive a free registration to attend the CODS-COMAD conference and will be invited to receive the award in a special session at the conference.

Eligibility

Nominated candidates must be from a PhD granting institute in India. Further, the nominated candidate should have successfully defended his/her thesis between August 31, 2023 and August 31, 2024 (i.e., in the period between last year’s deadline and this year’s deadline for application).

Important: Every PhD granting institute in India will be allowed to nominate 1 candidate from across all disciplines working in relevant areas. Institutes that produce more than 10 dissertations in relevant areas during the one year period under consideration can nominate 2 students. Institutes should self-declare in case they are nominating 2 students and furnish supporting evidence.

Important Dates

  • Submission Deadline: August 31, 2024 Sep 7, 2024
  • Notification of Awards: December 1, 2024 Award winners have been notified. The results will be publicly listed on this website after the award distribution at CODS COMAD 2024 on Dec 21st.
  • Award Presentation at CODS-COMAD December 2024

Nomination Requirements

Nominations must be made by the doctoral advisor. All nomination materials must be in English and in PDF format. Late submissions will not be accepted. A nomination must include:

  1. Nomination letter by thesis advisor. This letter must include:
    1. The name, address, phone number and email address of the advisor
    2. The name, mailing address and email address of the candidate
    3. A one-page (200-300 words) nomination statement addressing why the nominee should receive the award. The nomination should explain the significance of the work in the context of Data Science. In particular, the nomination should focus on the significance of the work and not just repeat the contents of the abstract of the thesis.
    4. A concise statement (maximum of 25 words) describing the key technical or professional accomplishment for which the nominee merits this award. This would serve as the suggested citation for the award, in case the nominee is selected. Note that the final wording for awardees will be at the discretion of the Awards Committee.
  2. An endorsement letter by the department head or a suitable substitute (in case of a conflict of interest).
  3. At least 3, and not more than 5, supporting letters from experts in the field who can provide additional insights or evidence of the dissertation’s impact. The nominator/advisor may not write a letter of support. Each letter should include the name, address, and telephone number of the supporter.
  4. One copy of the thesis in English in electronic (PDF) format.
  5. A copy of the thesis review comments given by the external examiners.
  6. A list of publications in conferences and journals based on the work reported in the dissertation, along with their citations (if any). The nomination should also include all the reviews received during the publication process.
  7. A copyright transfer form signed by the appropriate authority in the candidate’s parent institute giving permission for the dissertation to appear on ikdd.acm.org website, if the dissertation is selected as an award recipient

The dissertation can be nominated in parallel for other national and global awards, such as the ACM, the ACM India and the SIGKDD Doctoral Dissertation awards.

Submission Procedure

All nomination materials must be submitted using this Easy Chair link. All required documents must be uploaded as a zip file.

All nomination materials must be submitted electronically to IKDDOffice@gmail.com:. Please use "[IKDD Dissertation Award]" in your subject line. All required documents must be attached in a single email.

Award Committee

IKDD : ACM India Special Interest Group On Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining