This proposal supports participation of doctoral students from U.S. universities in the ninth SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium to be held July 25-26, 2004 in San Jose, CA., in conjunction with the 19th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-04), July, 25-29, 2004. The Doctoral Consortium aims to: (1) provide a setting for feedback on participants' current research and guidance on future research directions; (2) develop a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research; (3) support a new generation of researchers; and (4) contribute to the conference through interaction with other researchers at the conference. The Doctoral Consortium will aim to recruit and include students from under-represented groups (e.g., women and under-represented minorities) and smaller schools or schools with less established programs in artificial intelligence. Each student will give a 25-minute presentation to be followed by 20 minutes of discussion lead by a faculty participant. In addition, each student will have a one-on-one meeting with the faculty participant. There will also be a panel to discuss career issues in both academic and other career pathways.
