Call for PhD Forum Extended Abstracts

    The spirit of the PhD symposium is to offer an opportunity for students, currently performing a PhD in the scientific scope of the IFIP Networking conference, as specified in the call for papers, to present the advancement of their research work and collect tailored feedback from experts of the IFIP Networking community. As such, expected submissions must be issued by ongoing or very recently defended PhD students. The PhD symposium clearly expects submissions which summarize the PhD scientific activities at a given advancement stage. As such, they must not overlap with traditional scientific papers presented as long or short papers in conferences and workshops.

    Accepted extended abstracts will be published in the IFIP Digital Library as open access and submitted for inclusion to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

    Since the relevant scientific aspects evolve according to a PhD advancement, two types of submissions are considered in the PhD symposium, as described below.

    Early Stage PhD

    Expected contribution: Early stage PhD submissions are welcome with papers describing the general context of the PhD activity and the locks it aims at eventually overcoming. A synthetic but comprehensive state of the art of the field must be provided and the limits of current scientific contributions must be especially emphasized so that to formulate one or a few research questions which form the core of the PhD problem statement. Finally, the selected research methodology and some early ideas, even neither implemented nor validated, can be exposed. Finally, a general view of the work lying ahead has to be provided too.

    Eligibility: The Early Stage paper format is dedicated to the 1st year PhD students or early 2nd year PhD students who are starting to elaborate their first research contributions.

    Late Stage PhD

    Expected contribution: Late Stage submissions aim at providing an overview of the accomplished PhD work from a methodological perspective. More specifically, it must provide an up-to-date state of the art that pinpoints some limits motivating the contribution further exposed. Then, the current status of the research work with a particular emphasis on the selected methodology is expected and a comparison with the state of the art can be provided when relevant and achievable. Finally, according to the PhD advancement, the planned or implemented evaluation methodology and to what extent the latter supports reproducibility of research (sharing data sets, codes, etc.) have to be exposed. For PhD students who have already graduated, the PhD outcomes and the way they push forward the initial limits, as well as their current limits, is particularly expected.

    Please note that late stage submissions must not overlap with standard scientific papers focused on a standalone scientific contribution as presented in long or short papers of conferences and workshops, such as IFIP Networking and beyond.

    Eligibility: Late Stage submissions target ending PhD students or those who recently graduated, which is roughly from the beginning of the PhD manuscript writing up to 6 months after the defense. The Late Stage format is also open to ongoing PhD (i.e. 2nd year) if the submitted content satisfies with the expectations exposed above. 

    General Eligibility

    As PhD symposium differs from standard scientific tracks, and solely targets ongoing or very recently defended PhD, some eligibility assessment must be satisfied for submissions to be considered:

    • The list of authors is restricted to the PhD student and the supervisor. In the case where more than one advisor is involved in the PhD, thus leading to several authors in addition to the PhD student, the PhD symposium chairs must be informed and any official assessment must be provided.
    • PhD students of accepted PhD symposium papers must register to IFIP Networking 2026 and they are the sole person able to present their work during the event.
    • An official letter from the PhD advisor(s) is required to state the PhD status (beginning for Early Stage, ending with PhD defense date (expected or achieved) for Late Stage).

    Paper format: Paper submitted as an extended abstract. Submitted papers by early stage candidates should not exceed three (3) pages in length, including references. Submitted papers by late stage candidates should not exceed four (4) pages in length, including references. 

    Each accepted abstract must be presented during a PhD forum. The best abstract (separately in the category of early and late stage) will be selected by a special commission and awarded.

    General Submission Guidelines

    Two tracks are available for submission: one for Early Stage PhD submissions, and one for Late Stage PhD submissions. In both tracks, PhD students have to submit two files: the manuscript and the letter of their supervisor to prove their status as a PhD student. Manuscripts must be written in English and formatted according to the standard IEEE double-column conference template (10-point font). Templates and examples in LaTeX and Microsoft Word are available for download at: https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html.

    Papers not matching the length and formatting requirements or violating IEEE’s guidelines on plagiarized content will be rejected without review. All other submitted papers will be reviewed. Only PDF files will be accepted for the review process and all manuscripts must be electronically submitted through EDAS using the links provided below:

    A single-blind review process will be followed.

    Topic of Interest

    The symposium solicits submissions in the same field of the main conference. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

    • 5G/6G networks and beyond
    • Anomaly and malware detection
    • Applications of privacy-preserving computation in networks
    • Blockchain, ledger technologies, and their network-related applications
    • Cooperative perception networking
    • Data center networking
    • Data-driven network design
    • Delay/disruption tolerant networks and opportunistic networking
    • Device-to-device / machine-to-machine communications
    • Deterministic Networks
    • Digital Continuum Drone networking and unmanned technology-based services and applications
    • Emerging value-added services and applications
    • Evolution of IP network architectures and protocols
    • Fog and edge computing
    • Green networking
    • Heterogeneous and integrated networks
    • In-network computing
    • Information Centric Networking / Named-data networking
    • Internet of Things (IoT), and crowdsensing/crowdsourcing
    • Localization in indoor environments
    • Long-range communications
    • Machine learning (ML) and networking, artificial intelligence (AI)
    • (Multi-tenant) network slicing mmWave, and THz communications
    • Network architectures, applications, and services
    • Network attack/intrusion detection and mitigation
    • Network automation and management
    • Network economics and Game Theory
    • Network forensics
    • Network function virtualization (NFV)
    • Network modelling, analysis, and measurement
    • Network performance and optimization
    • Network security, authentication, measurement, trust and privacy
    • Network testbeds
    • Network traffic analysis
    • Non-terrestrial networks
    • Optical networking
    • Overlay and P2P networks
    • Participatory networks
    • Performance measurements
    • Positioning, Navigation, and Timing
    • Protective and collaborative networking
    • Public Safety Networks
    • Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces
    • Resilient networks Quality of service (QoS), quality of experience (QoE)
    • Quantum networking, quantum communications
    • Resource management
    • Self-organizing networks
    • Social networking
    • Socio-economic aspects of networks, pricing, and billing
    • Software-defined networking (SDN)
    • Time Sensitive Networks
    • Traffic engineering
    • Topology characterization
    • Traffic monitoring and analysis
    • Trustworthy and multi-metric routing
    • User behavior modelling, user profiling and tracking
    • UAV networks and extended connectivity
    • Vehicular networks and communications
    • Web technologies
    • Wireless and mobile networks
    • Wireless power transfer networks
    • Wireless sensor networks 

    Important Dates

    • Extended abstract submission deadline: April 4, 2026 April 16, 2026 (AoE)- Firm
    • Author’s notification deadline: April 26, 2026 April 28, 2026 
    • Camera ready deadline: April 30, 2026 

    PhD Symposium Co-Chairs

    •  Róża Goścień, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
    • Giovanni Schembra, University of Catania, Italy (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)