Call for IFAAMAS-14 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award Nominations

[Amit Chopra]

Nominations are invited for the 2014 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-2015 (http://www.aamas2015.com/).

Eligible doctoral dissertations are those defended between January 1,
2014 and December 31, 2014 in the area of Autonomous Agents or
Multiagent Systems.

This award includes a certificate 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 the AAMAS conference 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 Michael
Winikoff, michael.winikoff at otago.ac.nz, on or before February 28,
2015):

1. 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.

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

3. A recommendation from the dissertation supervisor, on departmental
   letterhead, nominating the dissertation for the IFAAMAS-14 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 2014.

4. 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 required that the nominee has consented that the
dissertation be considered for this award and, if selected for the
award, commits to attend the AAMAS-2015 conference, where he/she will
receive the award, and will give an hour-long presentation in a
special session of the conference on the work contained in the
dissertation. The cost of attending the conference is not covered by
the award.