Call for Symposium Proposals
Submission deadline: Thursday, July 15, 2021
The Organizing Committee for the 19th IUSSI International Congress is pleased to invite proposals for meeting symposia. These symposia will account for half of the talks presented at the Congress, with the remainder consisting of contributed talks organized by the Program Committee into thematic sessions. Speakers who commit to a symposium should be aware that everyone is limited to a single oral presentation at the Congress. Organizers should inform invited speakers of this rule and also that the Congress can offer no financial support to symposium participants.
Symposium format
Symposia will consist of up to nine 15-minute presentations. They will begin and end with 5-minute introductory and concluding remarks by the organizers. To encourage synthesis, organizers may also devote one or more 15-minute slots to a panel discussion or other means of encouraging interaction among speakers and with the audience.
Proposals must include the following:
- Symposium title
- Names of Chair and Co-chair(s). Two or more organizers are recommended, ideally from different institutions.
- Institutional affiliations and email addresses of Chair and Co-chair(s).
- Brief synopsis (no more than 250 words) explaining the symposium topic and why it is of interest to the IUSSI membership. This should be clearly written for a broad audience, since it will appear in the conference program and be read by people deciding whether to attend the symposium.
- Brief justifications explaining how the proposal meets the scientific criteria (≤250 words) and the diversity and inclusion criteria (≤250 words). The criteria are described below.
- A list of invited speakers, indicating which have been contacted and agreed to participate, at least tentatively. The list should include their current institutional affiliation and career stage (i.e., student, postdoc, junior scientist, senior scientist). Organizers may invite as many as nine speakers, or they may leave some slots open to fill later with speakers selected from submitted abstracts.
Selection criteria
Proposals will be reviewed by the Program Committee, who will inform organizers of their decisions by August 31, 2021. Successful proposals will then be announced on the congress web site. Proposals will be assessed using the following criteria.
- Scientific significance and interest to the IUSSI membership.
- Timeliness and novelty.
- Integration of multiple disciplines or fields of interest.
- Integration of symposium participants. This includes the complementarity of invited speakers, as well as any approaches (such as panel discussions) designed to encourage interaction among speakers and with the audience.
- Inclusion of a diversity of speakers, in terms of career stage, institution, gender, seniority, nationality, and other axes of diversity.
In selecting symposia, the program committee will also strive for a balanced selection of scientific topics that covers the full breadth of the society’s interests.
Proposal submission
Proposals must be submitted using this form: