Preface

AAMAS doctoral mentoring program provides an opportunity for PhD students in advanced stages of their research to interact closely with established researchers in their fields, to receive feedback on their work and to get advice on managing their careers.

Specifically, the goals of the program are:

• To match each student with an establish researcher in the community (who will act as a mentor). The mentor will interact closely with the student, will provide feedback on research, help form new contacts, etc.
• To allow students an opportunity to present their work to a friendly audience of other students as well as mentors.
• To provide students with contacts and professional networking opportunities.

The doctoral mentoring program consists of opportunities for interactions between mentors and their mentorees prior to the conference, as well as a one day doctoral symposium, which was held one day prior to the workshops.

AAMAS 2008 received 16 applications for the doctoral mentoring program. The applications consist of an extended-abstract, a personal research statement, a CV, and recommendation letter from the advisors. Each application was reviewed by two doctoral mentoring chairs. 12 mentorees were accepted, and each was assigned a mentor.

Several innovations were added to this year's doctoral mentoring program and the symposium. In order to make the symposium more active, mentorees were not only presenters of their theses, but also were assigned as members of the panel for other mentorees. This way, all mentorees become part of the discussion, and not only present. Moreover, we invited all the scholarship students to the symposium so that they could hear about the work of their peers and meet other graduate students.

Gal Kaminka and Yohei Murakami
Doctoral Mentoring Chairs