Science

The CESCG is a student seminar, but it is very similar to a scientific conference. For the participants it means:

  • guidance by international experts
  • up to 24 presentations by students
  • 2 keynote speakers
  • awards

Students may submit a research paper or they can attend as visitors.

Innovations

The first day of the seminar overlaps with the EXPO. Companies and research centers from Central Europe which are active in the field of visual computing share their experience:

  • interactive exhibition
  • up to 20 exhibitors
  • technical workshops
  • many job offers

Soft skills

All attendants can actively participate in interactive workshops on skills important for their future careers:

  • presenting
  • storytelling
  • leadership

Venue

CESCG takes place in the Smolenice castle in Slovakia. It is located next to a small town at the foot of the Carpathian hills.

  • 50 km away from Bratislava
  • accommodation and board included
  • free wifi
  • social program
  • activities in the nature

Important dates

Papers track

Abstracts

27 January 2020

Full papers

09 February 2020

Feedback

01 March 2020

Camera-ready

27 March 2020

Posters track

Abstracts

27 March 2020

Registration

Last chance

01 May 2020

Media submissions

Slides (for feedback)

19 April 2020

Video award submission

10 April 2020

Fast-forward submission

25 April 2020

Seminar

EXPO

CANCELLED

CESCG

02 May 2020 – 04 May 2020

IEEE Women in Engineering Best Student Paper Award

At this year’s CESCG, IEEE Women in Engineering will be awarding the best paper submitted by a female student. The purpose of this award is to acknowledge and promote the remarkable achievements of women in technology in science, research and industry.

How to participate

Please select your role to get customized information.

Submitting a paper to CESCG takes some time and effort, but it is a unique opportunity to learn a lot of things the school will most likely not teach you. The intense three days seminar lets you experience the latest knowledge in visual computing in a very interactive way. Most important of all, you will get a lot of feedback.

Scientific writing

In the last three months before the seminar you will learn how to write a scientific report. Your local supervisor and two or three international experts specialized on your topic will provide you feedback. You will learn about the proper structure and storytelling in science. The resulting paper will be your first scientific publication.

Presenting

Verbal and visual presentations are important in everyday life, not only in science. You will learn how to give a good pitch, but also a long explanation. We offer feedback service for presentation slides one week before the seminar. Since practice is the best preparation, you will have a lot of chances to practice before and during the event.

Career

The seminar includes an industrial exhibition of innovative companies and research institutions in the field of visual computing. They often scout for talented students and offer internships or jobs. Your research paper and its presentation is a good way to attract their attention. Some of the exhibitors also give specialized workshops. Make sure not to miss them.

Social program

Evenings are spent in a relaxed mood making new friendships. You can meet many interesting young people with focus similar to yours. These friendships sometimes grow to important cooperation.

The seminar takes place in spring. Half a year earlier you should select your favorite topic and consult the seminar submission with your supervisor. You can submit only if he or she recommends your work for the seminar.

Focus on visual computing

Your topic should be focused on visual computing.

  • computer graphics
  • computer animation
  • image processing
  • computer vision
  • visualization
  • visual analytics
  • VR and AR
  • geometric modeling
  • 3D printing
  • human computer interaction

Eligible authors

You should be a university student of visual computing or related curriculum. Computer science and mathematics are fine. Please make sure that your supervisor is affiliated with one of our partner institutions. If not, please contact us as soon as possible.

Submissions can be written by one or several student authors and one supervisor. If the first author is a bachelor’s student, he or she should be at least in the 5th semester. A doctoral student may be an author only if it is the first publication during his or her PhD study.

In the first phase you should be working on your research with your local supervisor. Do not forget to submit the title and abstract and a few weeks later the full paper draft. Please make sure to study the guidelines in detail and follow them.

Abstract submission

In order to prepare the feedback process we need the title, keywords and abstract of your work two weeks before the submission deadline.

Full draft submission

The report must be written in proper English. It should be at most 8 pages DIN A4. Using the provided LaTeX template is mandatory. The .tex source files must be included in the submission. You are not allowed to take any modifications to the predefined formatting.

The submitted work may be a report on initial research work still in progress. However, it must be complete from the structural point of view. There must be a problem formulation with motivation, a clear outline of contributions or novelty, a comprehensive presentation of the proposed method. Most important of all, there must be results presented and evaluated already in this stage.

Three weeks after the paper submission you will receive feedback from 2 – 3 expert scientists who are specialized on your topic or work with a very similar one. You should integrate all their suggestions and address all their concerns in the final version of your paper. Your supervisor has to check on that upon submission. Please do not forget to rate back how helpful the feedback was for your work.

You will have less than a month to prepare the final “camera-ready” of your paper. Please keep in mind that you should also start preparing other presentation materials soon enough.

Presentations vs. posters

Along with the feedback you will also get a notification on the presentation form granted for your paper. The presentation form does not affect the written submission at all.

The schedule of the seminar allows for 24 student presentations. Usually, there are not more submissions than that. But in case we receive more, the committee sorts them and assigns full presentation slots (15 mins) and poster slots.

As of 2018 we include a separate track for posters with talks which is mainly intended to discuss work in progress. Students first submit a single-page talk proposal using the official CESCG template. Within a few days we invite the best proposals to the seminar. There is only little written feedback before the event, but the short talk at the seminar kicks off discussion about the poster with the audience.

Neither the proposal, nor the poster are parts of the proceedings. Posters will be exhibited in the halls of the castle during the whole event. Submission link and guidelines can be found at the bottom of this page.

Posters track submissions also have to submit a fast forward and they may send presentation slides for feedback. However, they are not considered for the awards.

You should spend the last few weeks before the seminar preparing the main presentation or poster, and also the supplementary presentation material like the fast-forward and a video.

Presentations

For a full presentation slot you should prepare a 15 minutes talk. The audience will have 5 minutes to ask additional questions. Please prepare your slides in a 16:9 format. A few days before the seminar we offer remote feedback to your talk. If you send us your slides for review, please do not forget to add notes so that we know what you are going to say. The level of talks is very high. You should not underestimate the preparation amount. It starts with a smooth structure, great visuals on the slides and ends with a lot of practice. A talk usually evolves during several weeks. You should practice it several times and at least once at your home university in front of a real audience.

Students with posters prepare a DIN A1 scientific poster instead of a talk. A poster summarizes the paper with a few images and text blocks. Posters (if any) will be presented during a separate session. The authors will stand next to their posters installed in the halls of the castle and discuss their work with the passing audience. Remember that students with posters will also present their work within the fast forwards session.

Fast forwards

All students give a fast 30 seconds preview of their work at the opening ceremony. The impact can be high. All our EXPO partners are carefully watching you. Preparing a good elevator pitch for the first time is not easy. Make sure to take enough time to find the best combination of visual and spoken messages. Please note that the organizers are serious about strictly following the provided template.

Science videos

For most conferences in visual computing a video attached to the submission is already a standard. We hope you will also prepare a video illustrating your work or method. Each year the international program committee awards the best student video. For examples from previous years have a look on our Youtube channel.

The seminar takes place in the beautiful castle in Smolenice, Slovakia. The participants also sleep at the castle. The program starts already before the opening ceremony. In the first session the students rehearse the fast forwards and learn some pitching tricks. Therefore, please arrive to the castle on time. It makes no sense if two dozens of other authors have to wait for a few latecomers.

Travel

Once you find a good connection to Bratislava or Vienna, you are almost there. Contact the organizers for advice on local transport. We also often organize car sharing. If you travel with your own car, please let us know. Free parking is possible at the lower courtyard.

Costs

We try to keep the fees as low as possible. Usually the student tickets cost around 100€ all included. We assume our partner institutions can refund the fees of their students. If not, high costs must never be an obstacle for a student to submit a paper. We offer special scholarships up to the full seminar fee for such cases. Please consult the organizers any time.

Dress code

No formal dress is required. The activities during the seminar include not only scientific sessions and the opening dinner, but also a barbecue, sportive activities in the nature and dancing. Comfortable casual dressing and sport shoes are the best choice.

How much time does it take to write a paper?

If you start writing a paper for the seminar, you should be working on your topic already in the autumn. Writing down the paper takes about a month, but it can take even long if you are not accustomed writing in English. Preparing high-quality images and meaningful illustrations sometimes takes more than a week.

After submitting your manuscript for review you get a paper for cross-reviewing. Depending on its quality it can take a few hours up to a day. Once you have receive the reviews three weeks later, there is a lot of work ahead. Improving your paper according to the feedback will take a week or two. We encourage students to produce short videos presenting their method and the results. It usually takes a few days to cut a nice video. At the same time you should already start preparing the fast forward presentation and your main presentation or poster.

I have to work on my thesis, why bothering with CESCG?

Because for most students the CESCG paper is just a shortened version of their future thesis. The seminar provides you with extensive feedback from international experts in your specific domain which you can also use to improve your thesis. The time overhead for writing a seminar paper is relatively low, since you can reuse all of it for your thesis.

I am already a PhD student. Can I submit my work?

Yes, you can present the work you have done for your Master’s thesis. You can also write a paper on your PhD topic, however it has to be the first publication during your PhD study and it will be of course not considered peer-reviewed.

If I submit a paper do I have to present it?

Yes.

Is it possible to participate without writing a paper?

Absolutely. Do not hesitate to participate at the seminar without an own submission. There is a lot of interesting program for all participants.

CESCG offers a balanced program for students who present their research work and those who are only about to start. Many interactive program features help the students to improve their soft skills and get an overview of careers in visual computing.

Students can participate at the seminar as visitors or as authors. Authoring own work takes time, but the gain from the whole publishing process has a strong educational effect. We do not require major scientific contributions, but at least a novel perspective should be presented. It is also worth to visit the seminar even without writing an own paper, just to experience the workshops and the exhibition.

Unlimited slots per group

Each of our partner institutions may send an arbitrary number of student submissions which fulfill the guidelines for authors. However, in return we expect the group to deliver three times as many high-quality reviews for students from other groups.

In case your institute did not attended CESCG in past few years, please contact us first.

No competition policy

Our goal is to teach the students, not to let them compete. All submissions that fulfill the guidelines for authors are accepted. We trust the quality control to their supervisors. Rating of the papers only decides about a long/short presentation slot and influences the selection of the best paper award.

Non-peer-reviewed

The single-blind review process only provides feedback from international experts to the students. The committee does not approve or reject the submissions. Nevertheless, comments provided to the students are usually more detailed than reviews on standard conferences.

Open-access management

It is up to the supervisors to decide whether the student paper, possibly work in progress, is made public or stays private to the seminar participants for up to a year.

Participation at the seminar is a great experience for both authors and visitors. Please spread the word about CESCG in your classes all the year long. Do not hesitate to enthuse even freshmen. It is great if they visit the seminar a few times and then write a paper out of their thesis.

Focus on visual computing

All participants should be university students of visual computing or related curricula.

Eligible authors

Submissions can be written by one or several student authors and one supervisor. If the first author is a bachelor’s student, he or she should be at least in the 5th semester. A doctoral student may be an author only if it is the first publication during his or her PhD study.

As a non-peer-reviewed seminar we trust the quality control to the hands of supervisors. Starting a few months before the seminar, you as a supervisor should actively and regularly meet with your students and advice them. It is your responsibility to give the students a first introduction to the principles of scientific work. Please make sure that the basic criteria are met before submitting the manuscript.

Abstract submission

In order to prepare the feedback process and start planing the schedule we need the title, keywords and abstract two weeks before the submission deadline. Do not forget that you as a supervisor also need an account in the submission system.

Complete vs. finished

The submitted work may be a report on research still in progress, but it must be complete from the structural point of view. There must be a problem formulation with motivation, a clear outline of contributions or novelty, a comprehensive presentation of the proposed method and most important of all complete results.

LaTeX template

Please note that using the provided LaTeX template is mandatory. The source files must be included in the submission. Students are not allowed to take any modifications to the predefined formatting.

All groups who send students have to participate in giving feedback to the others. Since each of your students gets 2-3 reviews, you will be asked to write an equal number of reviews.

Friendly feedback

Your feedback should be detailed, positive, helpful and constructive. Remember that students will also rate back your comments. Please do not underestimate the time necessary to write a number of high-quality reviews. You should distribute the work among your colleagues. Remember the triple reviews rule and think twice how many student submissions you send.

Presentations and posters

All accepted papers are included in full length in the proceedings. Presentation of the results can be either in a full 15 minutes slot or during the posters session. The seminar time frame can occupy around 24 full-length student presentations. Submissions to be presented in the full mode are selected based on the ratings . The best student of each group has a full slot guarantee, the remaining students are assigned according to a global ranking. If there are less than 24 submissions no decision is necessary and we request only 2 reviews per paper.

Camera-ready approval

It is your responsibility to check whether the student integrated recommendations from the feedback, so that the hard work invested by the reviewers is not in vain. We require you to confirm this in our submission system as well.

Submission of the camera-ready paper is not the end of the educational process. After the scientific writing they should also practice presenting their work during the seminar.

Presentations

You should rehearse with your students in private and in front of an audience a few weeks before the seminar. The quality level is high, but hard work can avoid embarrassment. The students are also offered a special feedback round for presentation slides.

Fast forwards

All students give a fast 30 seconds preview of their work at the opening ceremony. The rules are strict and the impact can be high. All our EXPO partners are carefully watching the students. Please help your students to prepare a good elevator pitch as they often tackle with the format which is unknown to them.

Science videos

For most conferences in visual computing a video attached to the submission is already a standard. We try to motivate students to prepare videos illustrating their work. Each year the international program committee awards the best student video.

We would like to invite the supervisors to visit the seminar, not only to send their students. Each year we have interesting improvements in the program. The seminar is no longer just student talks. Your personal experience in Smolenice is essential for motivating students at your local university to join CESCG in the future.

Travel

Once you find a good connection to Bratislava or Vienna, you are almost there. Contact the organizers for advice on local transport. We also often organize car sharing.

Costs

We try to keep the fees as low as possible. Usually the student tickets are around 100€ all included (board, accommodation, conference fee). We assume that most institution can refund the fees to their students. If not, high costs must never be an obstacle for a student to submit a paper. We offer special scholarships up to the full seminar fee for such cases. Please consult the organizers any time.

Be on time

The program starts in the morning before the official opening ceremony with a workshop on pitching. It includes a mandatory rehearsal of the fast forwards. Please make sure that all your students arrive to the castle on time. It makes no sense if two dozens of others have to wait for a few latecomers.

My best Master’s student can make it to a first tier conference/journal. Why should I consider CESCG?

CESCG is not only about publishing. The educational aspects of the seminar, inspiration and networking factors are much more important. We do our best to give the students something valuable for life, not only a track record for the CV.

We know that in some scholar systems publishing is important even for master’s students. Since CESCG is non-peer-reviewed seminar, the papers count as technical reports. There is no problem submitting a slightly improved version to a peer-reviewed conference or journal. We also let the supervisors decide whether the manuscript is made public.

I think my students are too young for that.

Regardless of their age, all university students can benefit from visiting CESCG. Listening to talks, experiencing the workshops and being inspired by the EXPO is great for every university student. For writing an own paper, the most important factors are an interesting topic, motivation and enough time. We often see excellent work by bachelor’s students. Nevertheless, the quality of the results is not as important as what they learn about science before and during CESCG.

How much scientific novelty is required?

Students should present some original novel work, but we accept minimal scientific contributions. Usage of scientific methodology is important. Presenting an interesting topic from a novel perspective is also fine. It is just a student seminar which provides a first contact with international scientific work for the participants.

Should I travel to CESCG with my student(s)?

We are always pleased to welcome supervisors of the participating students at CESCG, but it is of course not required.

The Central European Seminar on Computer Graphics is the most awesome international scientific event for students of visual computing. With many unique features it provides a valuable combination of knowledge and training and interaction. Whether you decide a career in academia or industry, CESCG helps you to get the best starting position.

EXPO

A large exhibition on innovations on the first day is a unique showcase of local experts. It is followed by exclusive industrial workshops in the evening. You can try out high-end professional tools or apps which have not been released yet. Developers from our partner companies share insights about their work. You can easily find out whether you would like their job and what is the best procedure to apply for it. If you rather think about starting an own business, people at the EXPO can provide you with a lot of specific insight and advice.

Soft skills

Most of your professional life will depend on communication. A large portion of the seminar is dedicated to intense practice of selected soft skills.All seminar participants are encouraged to actively participate in the workshops. The first one is focused on pitching your ideas in different situation in a clear, well structured way. The second provides you with basic insights into group dynamics and team leadership.

Knowledge & Networking

For all students it is very interesting to see presentation on a wide variety of visual computing topics. There are up to 24 student talks and 2 invited talks by senior researchers. After each block there are coffee breaks where you can clarify details with the speakers and develop ideas further. Social program in the afternoons and evenings offers a great opportunity to meet other students and researchers from all Europe.

If you plan to attend the seminar, please register the latest two weeks in advance. Since the venue booking is done for an exact number of participants it is not possible to register on site. The registration fee includes accommodation and full board.

Eligible participants

We invite all students of visual computing and related curricula and their supervisors to participate at the seminar. There is no geographic restriction, we accept all universities world-wide. It is perfectly fine to attend the seminar without submitting a paper. We encourage all prospective authors to visit the seminar before starting their own research work.

Participants may register accompanying persons who are not visual computing students or teachers, however only if there is enough venue capacity after the early-birds registration deadline.

Seminar fees

The regular seminar fee covers the costs for accommodation, full board and rental of the premises. For students, it is relatively high. Therefore, there are several types of discounts. Make sure to check which ones are applicable for you. Of course early-bird tickets have the best rates.

Travel

Once you find a good connection to Bratislava or Vienna, you are almost there. Contact the organizers for advice on local transport. We also often organize car sharing. Private parking is possible on the lower courtyard free of charge.

Venue

The Smolenice castle is a beautiful historic place. Serving to the Slovak Academy of Sciences it provides conference rooms, a dining hall and rooms for 100 guests. Participants are provided with everything they need for the three days, so visiting the town is not necessary.

In the first evening we always make a guided castle tour from the lower courtyard up to the top of the tower. On the second day, if the weather allows, we walk through the park outside of the gates to the nearest hill to explore its ancient history.

Dress code

The seminar involves listening to talks, a ceremonial dinner, workshops with outdoor activities, a barbecue, the castle tour and the Molpír hike. A wide range of different activities would make it difficult to dress formally. Therefore, the only rule of the dress code is to feel well.

Can I arrive one day earlier / stay one day longer?

Yes it is possible. Please contact the organizers at least one month in advance.

Can I arrive later / leave earlier?

If you are speaker, you should participate at the very first workshop which is a rehearsal for the opening ceremony. Otherwise, yes it is possible.

Papers track submission

The submission follows in two rounds. You receive feedback from experts and other students after the first round. You should follow their advice closely to improve your paper as much as possible for the final submission round. Each round uses a different submission system, both are described below. Please make sure to fulfill the editorial requirements for both rounds of the submissions. Details are listed in the Guidelines section.

Phase 1

Abstracts

27 January 2020

Full papers

09 February 2020

The first submission is carried out through the EasyChair conference management system. Please do not forget to enter the abstract in advance. The submission can be updated up to the deadline. Note that the submissions in the first round are anonymous. Please read the guidelines carefully before submitting the paper. Also make sure to go through the following checklist:

  • Use the LaTeX Template
  • Anonymous submission - no personal information in the pdf
  • Run a spellchecker

In order to experience the feedback process from inside, you will also have to review one of the submissions. You will receive the instructions by email after the submission deadline.

Guidelines
Submit

Phase 2

Camera-Ready

27 March 2020

To submit the final version of your paper, please click on the key symbol in the top navigation menu and create an account. After registration you should land on the dashboard where on in the menu on the left you find Submissions where you can add a new one. The same can be achieved through the key symbol once logged in.

In case you do not see Submissions and other post types listed in the menu on the left, you probably created your account when buying a ticket, so your role is customer instead of author. Let us know if that happens, so that we can assign you the proper role.

Please remember that the submitted pdf will be checked for compliance with the guidelines. We often have to fix small issues, therefore we also require you to submit the LaTeX source compressed in a zip file. The same interface should be used for the upload of further material (fast-forwards, videos, presentations).

We hope the feedback round helped you to improve your paper. Now we would like to ask you to rate how helpful were the reviews. We will use your data to improve the feedback process for the next year. Your rating will stay anonymous, not linkable to your person or paper.

Posters track submission

27 March 2020

This track is intended to show work in progress, or completed work without writing a full paper publication. An important part of the poster presentation is a talk. We require to submit an extended abstract which is basically a talk proposal. Please use the same template as for full papers. It should cover at least:

  • Problem definition
  • Motivation to solve it
  • Related work
  • Your approach

To submit an extended abstract, please click on the key symbol in the top navigation menu and create an account. After registration you should land on the dashboard where in the menu on the left you find Posters. Please create a new one, fill out the form and upload your PDF file. Please submit only the extended abstract, there is no need to submit the poster beforehand.

Notification on the acceptance of the extended abstracts for the posters is two days after the submission deadline.

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