The 19th Ph.D. Forum on Pervasive Computing and Communication will be hosted by PerCom 2026. The Forum provides an excellent opportunity for Ph.D. students to present their dissertation research, including work in progress, to the wider pervasive computing and communication community. This meeting offers an opportunity to share experiences with other Ph.D. students and meet with accomplished international researchers and obtain feedback from them.
PhD Forum Format
The Forum will be organized as a workshop co-located with PerCom. In addition, the Forum will be supplemented by a one-minute-madness session plus a poster session during the main conference, to facilitate extended interaction opportunities between Ph.D. student participants and researchers from academia, industry, and government.
During the workshop, senior members of the community will be present to provide constructive technical comments to each attendee. The Forum will provide a working environment for students to refine and practice their presentations, helping them improve communication skills, and to collaboratively develop research ideas for the PhD research and beyond. Special recognition will be given to the most innovative and/or most promising research project(s) presented at the Ph.D. Forum based on the pitch talk, the presented poster, and the discussions with the participants during the poster session.
Paper Submission and Publication
Ph.D. students are invited to submit two-page extended abstracts in English that describe their current research and potential contributions to innovative theory, algorithm development, and applications in pervasive computing and communications.
The abstract should include the author’s name, affiliation and email address. The name of the supervisor should be marked (“supervised by …”) on the paper, under the author’s name. Submissions must be in PDF format, be no more than two pages in length (all included) and adhere to the IEEE two-column conference format (the same format used for paper submissions to PerCom 2026).
Submissions that are substantially similar to presentations from a previous Ph.D. Forum are not allowed.
Submissions will be subject to light peer review, to ensure quality and relevance. In case of acceptance, the length of the camera-ready paper will be limited to two pages. Accepted abstracts will appear in the conference’s workshop proceedings and will be indexed by DBLP and the IEEE digital library.
All manuscripts must be registered and submitted through the EDAS Submission Site (link).
Participation
Authors of accepted submissions are expected to participate in the Ph.D. Forum (a half-day workshop immediately prior to the main conference), and to deliver an elevator pitch and A1 poster presentation for their work during the main program of the PerCom 2026 conference.
Participants who are current full-time students are eligible for the student registration fee. Please note that any other publication in PerCom—including main conference papers, posters, demos, workshop papers, or work-in-progress submissions—requires at least one author to register at the full rate. If a student planning to attend the PhD Forum is also a co-author of any such publication, and no other co-author is registering at the full rate, the student must register at the full rate and is not eligible for the student rate.
Some students will also be able to apply for travel grants (when details are available, they will be published on the PerCom website).
The conference is planned to be held in person in Pisa, Italy.
Important Dates
Extended abstract submission deadline: December 8, 2025, 23:59 AoE
Notification of acceptance: January 8, 2026
Camera-ready paper due: February 2, 2026
Conference Dates: March 16 – 20, 2026
PhD Forum Chairs
Sarah Clinch (University of Manchester, UK)
Simone Silvestri (University of Kentucky)
For further information about the forum, please contact the co-chairs.