MELECON 2016

Student Paper Competition

General

Students are encouraged to submit their papers to the MELECON 2016 Student Paper Competition (SPC). The paper should satisfy the MELECON paper submission requirements and submitted by the paper submission deadline. Each paper which is accepted for the SPC should be presented by the primary author, who must be a student, and registered for MELECON 2016. Each registered student can participate to the SPC with only one accepted paper. The paper submissions should contain original, high quality, not submitted or published elsewhere research work. Papers should strictly follow the format specified by the organizers and have a page limit of 4 to 6 pages. All accepted papers will be included in the proceedings of MELECON 2016.

Who could participate?

Students working towards their Masters or PhD degree are encouraged to participate in the SPC.

Main Goal of SPC

SPC is an excellent opportunity for personal leadership and strong involvement of students in a prospective scientific/technical activity. It gives the possibility for all participants, students, counselors, professors and many others to be involved and to participate in such an important and interesting student activity.

Character of the Papers

Papers should cover technical and engineering aspects of a subject related to the track areas specified at the conference website. The work need not be original in engineering content, but should be original in treatment and concise in coverage of the author’s contribution to the subject.

Student Paper Competition Guidelines

Students interested in participating in the competition should:

1. a) Prepare their manuscript following the MELECON 2016 guidelines as outlined in the conference web site. All papers must be within the 4 to 6 page limit.
2. b) Submit their paper to the MELECON 2016 Conference as a Contributed Paper by the paper submission deadline.
3. c) Inform their advisor's that they should also submit a Nomination email of 250 words (supporting the importance of the work carried out) for their student's entry by the paper submission deadline. The email should be sent to the Student Paper Competition Chair, Dr. Christos Loizou, email: [email protected]. A student may submit only ONE entry.

The Review Process

SPC submissions will be reviewed in the usual manner by the Conference Editorial Board for their suitability to be included in the technical program of the Conference. Those receiving high scores in the initial review will then be reviewed by the SPC Committee to short-list the Finalists. The nomination by faculty advisors is a very important document here (remember it must be received by the paper submission deadline).

Evaluation and Review Criteria

The following evaluation and review guidelines will be given to the SPC Committee and the Reviewers:

Please use a percentage numerical score from 0%-100% to evaluate a paper. In addition to the numerical score, you could provide a technical review of up to 1 page, like a review you would do for journals by assessing the scientific merit of the paper and the student’s contribution to the work. Your detailed expert review comments would be most useful to the committee.

Please use the following four main criteria to review the paper – each suggests some areas you might want to look into. The relative weighting of each area is shown in %. We need an overall % score for the paper - in order to try and calibrate the scores - aim such that anything > 90% is a world leading research paper.

Q1. Is the scientific contribution of the work to the field real and identifiable? (35%)
- Is the contribution evident from the paper?
- What of the scientific rigour?
- Is it of interest to the broader community of biomedical engineering?

Q2. What is the technical quality of the paper? (35%) - Is there a good introduction to the problem and rationale for the study?
- Is the solution logically developed?
- Is there a solid literature review placing this work in context?
- Is the methodology concise yet descriptive?
- Are the results clearly shown?
- Is the discussion section appropriate, logical and are the conclusions well defined?

Q3. From the paper and nomination, how would you rate the contribution from the student author? (20%)
- Is the students' contribution clearly visible?
- Where would this sit in comparison to the students' peer's work?

Q4. Is the paper formatted and put together well (10%)
- Is the spelling and grammar OK?
- Are the figures and tables appropriate, legible and necessary?
- Are figure captions complete?
- Are the references complete and do they strike the right balance (well defined references and not too much self-referencing)?

The Finalists

First, Second, and Third place winners will be selected based on the technical merits of the work, professionalism of the presentation, and verbal communication skills. The three overall winners of the SPC will receive an engraved plaque and an honorarium of 300 Euro for the first placed winner, 200 Euro for the second placed winner, and 100 Euro for the third placed winner. All Finalists will receive Certificates of Merit.