Preparing, Sorting and Structuring Contents for Publications

As of now, I am still writing on my PhD proposal.
Also, the whole RECAA-Team tries to funnel its finding into outlines for possible publications in 2010.

The PhD proposal will be finished this year. It looks like we have 3 to 4 papers in the pipeline coming up. We'll see how that turns out.

If I don't come back here before next week - merry Christmas to everybody!

Writing Thesis Proposal and Thinking about Google Fellowships

I am at the throat of my dissertation thesis. Actually have been for quite some weeks. I definitely want to finish it before xmas. That is a must.

Also, Google came around the corner offering fellowships in my research area. To make sure you get this: this ain't a job offer, it's just an option to apply for the fellowship. It is not certain if it will be granted or not. Still, it might be interesting - especially for those following me in my research, sustaining the wave and pushing Requirements Engineering a little further. These guys want to. And they should be able to do so.
Yeah, there's long ways to go, but somebody has to get to the bottom of the pit.

The end of this week should be marked by a rough sketch of the thesis contents. The outline is done, some of the contents and illustrations are already created. But again, way to go.

Let's see what I can tell you next week.

Finished IJSC Journal Article

Just finished the camera ready version of the IJSC article. The paper is due Dec, 1st, but it never hurts to be done earlier than expected.
So look out for our first journal paper in 2010!

Working on Research Project Grants

We are currently planning and structuring our research for the next couple of years.
This will then be transformed into a research application at the DFG.

The structure and contents of the application are all set - now we are in the process of writing the application since we plan on expanding the research area by mid of next year.

This week, we'll finish the "Goal and Contributionts" section as well as the "Preliminary Results".
Next week should be the rest of "Related Work" and then we should be almost good to go.

Made the Switch to KIT

I finally made the switch to me@kit.edu.
That means sven.koerner@ ...

It took quite a while and somehow I had to mess with the whole administration to get it done.
The problem seems to have been that I am still a student (PhD student, to be precise) at university whereas I am also an employee of the university. Well, at least I have employee's rights.
Anyhow - the two accounts seem to be inherently distinct and this caused a lot of problems when I tried to get my paperwork straight.
That said, my quest for the kit.edu program is over. I made it and it took only 8 months (yes, it started in February with applying for the correct email address).

Background:
The University of Karlsruhe merged with other technology research projects in the area to form the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology - short: KIT (yes, the similar sounding to MIT is intended). More information to be found at www.kit.edu

Planning Research Future

I am finally back from the US.
We spent the last couple of days focusing on planning, scoping and scheduling the research plans for the next couple of months. The complete plan includes work for the research group up to the year 2012. These are all tasks which we have and want to address in the future.

We will present our plans next week and try to get the buy in from our professor and faculty. After that, we can focus on budget and middle-term planning. The short-term planning (that is until April 2010) is almost finished. This includes

• 2 master's thesis
• 1 possible master's thesis
• my dissertation proposal
• and finally: my dissertation

All our work will be published, structured and planned using Trac. You might want to take a look at it here.

Attending the ICSC2009 in Berkely, USA

At this very moment, I am about to hear the opening keynote for the 2nd day of the ICSC2009 in Berkeley.
I got here on Sunday night after my 3 weeks vacation touring all over the western US (that includes Napa, Yosemite, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Phoenix) and visiting my family in San Diego.
I was fortunate enough to have my presentation at 10am the first day of the conference on Monday. It went wall and considering the fact that Dr. Fillmore and Dr. Scott attended my talk made it even more interesting. Some of the people who were in the audience let my know during the reception dinner that they really enjoyed my talk and that they were able to tell I was confident speaking in front of crowds. Well, that's when all the music studies and concerts I gave pay off ;-)

Today, I will listen to another parallel session about NLP - there were some interesting aspects so far which I might be able to consider for my work. I will have to thoroughly read the papers though.

That's it for now, I will keep you posted.