WORKSHOPS

Organizers: Anna Wilbik (Professor in Data Fusion and Intelligent Interaction, DACS/BISS Maastricht University, The Netherlands), Bas Lemmens (Project Manager, DACS Maastricht University, The Netherlands), Shashank Chakravarthy (Research Engineer & PhD Candidate, BISS, Maastricht University, The Netherlands)

Beyond the buzzwords: talking seriously to industry partners

• Would you like to collaborate more with industry?
• Could you use some help to effectively ‘sell’ your ideas?
• When talking to industry, do you sometimes wonder whether they understand what you are saying?
• Are you a young to mid-level researcher?

If yes, then this workshop is for you!

During this fun, hands-on, interactive workshop, you will learn about industry-academia communication, common mistakes and misconceptions on both sides. We hope to stimulate you to collaborate more with industry. We expect that this will help you to increase your research impact, stimulating innovation and economic growth.

The workshop will be provided by Brightlands Institute for Smart Society (BISS) and Department of Advanced Computing Sciences (DACS).

Brightlands Institute for Smart Society is a research institute of Maastricht University where we use AI and data science to shape the society of tomorrow. At BISS, we believe in the power of interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation to address complex societal challenges. Our team consists of scientists from various disciplines, including ethics, consumer behavior, legislation, privacy, neuroscience, and, of course, data science and AI. BISS brings together academics, researchers, businesses, and government agencies to work on smart solutions for a sustainable and inclusive society. BISS is happy to share knowledge and experience with you on how to collaborate successfully with industry.

The Department of Advanced Computing Sciences is Maastricht University’s largest and oldest department broadly covering the fields of artificial intelligence, data science, computer science, mathematics and robotics. We maintain a large network of public and private partners through our research collaborations and through the award-winning KE@Work programme. In addition, our staff teaches approximately 900 bachelor’s and master’s students in specialized study programmes in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science.

This workshop is sponsored by Breaking Boundaries Initiative and Technical Activities of IEEE CIS. Breaking Boundaries initiative of CIS IEEE (started in 2023) aims at bringing new energy to the computational intelligence research area by improving collaborations with various stakeholders, such as industry, different research domains of underrepresented geographic areas, e.g. such as Africa.

Organizers: Iván Mauricio Amaya Contreras (Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico); Sansanee Auephanwiriyakul (Chiang Mai University, Thailand), Gabriella Casalino (University of Bari, Italy), Susana Vieira (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal), Anna Wilbik (Maastricht University, Netherlands)

Activities from the IEEE CIS Mentoring and Skills Development Sub-Committee will take place in-person at FUZZ-IEEE 2025 in France this year. Our Sub-Committee offers a unique opportunity for mentees (early-career researchers) to engage directly with leaders in the field, enriching their research experience and enhancing their career trajectories through two main activities. The first activity encourages one-to-one mentor-mentee engagement with an initial focus on providing feedback on the paper presented at the conference. This activity wraps up with a networking event across all mentee and mentor cohorts, to foster discussion and enrich the feedback. The second activity is the Paper Development Workshop (PDW), which aims to guide participants in developing a high-quality manuscript suitable for submission to IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems. Both activities are independent from each other and require a separate registration.

Who is it for?

The activities are open to all students and early-career researchers presenting a paper at FUZZ-IEEE 2025, with priority given to IEEE CIS student members. Participation in the program is free of charge to registered presenters, since IEEE CIS will sponsor both activities. Successful applicants to the program will be selected based on their paper review scores.

All presenters accepted into either activity will be notified explicitly via email. Applications submitted after the Early Registration Deadline may not be considered for participation in the program.

How does it work?

Mentees will be contacted via email prior to the conference. Before the conference, mentor and mentee contact details will be shared between them to support Activity I (see below); mentees are expected to drive engagement with their mentors, e.g. sending their accepted conference paper to the mentor in advance of their presentation to allow the mentors to read the paper and provide some feedback. This activity wraps up with the networking event.

Mentees who also wish to attend the PDW (see Activity II) must submit their draft papers in accordance with the guidelines and by the specified deadline. To clarify again, the PDW is open to all conference participants; however, to participate, you must apply as outlined under Activity II.

What activities should I look forward to?

This exciting program comprises two main activities:

Activity I: One-to-One Mentoring and Networking

The program matches eligible mentees (students and early-career academics) with mentors (senior academics) from the field to provide mentees with constructive feedback on their FUZZ-IEEE 2025 publication and paper presentation, as well as a community point of contact during the conference. Please be advised of the following:

• The mentor is encouraged to attend the presentation of the paper (where possible) and to engage with the presenter, for example, through contributing constructive questions in the Q&A part.
• Following the paper’s presentation, mentor and mentee are encouraged to meet up (e.g., in a coffee break) for feedback and potential follow-up discussion (where desired).

All mentoring activity participants will be invited to an exclusive networking event to support interaction and networking across the mentee and mentor cohorts. This event will last for two hours and its schedule will be revealed at a later date.

Activity II: Paper Development Workshop (PDW)

The purpose of the PDW is to provide participants in the mentoring program with the opportunity to hear from and engage with the editorial team(s) of the IEEE CIS flagship journals. The focus of the PDW is for potential authors to learn about paper development for publication in top journals and get hands-on feedback on their own papers. At FUZZ-IEEE 2025, the PDW will be run by the Editor-in-Chief and the Associate Editors of the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems (TFS), offering both an overview of the journal and its priorities, as well as small-group, hands-on sessions for participants. The PDW will last for two hours and its schedule will be revealed at a later date.

Application to attend the PDW is required and independent from the mentoring program, i.e., mentees are not automatically invited to the PDW, nor vice versa. In order to apply, participants are required to submit a draft journal paper (which may be based on their accepted conference paper), following these guidelines:

• All draft papers should follow the IEEE journal paper submission guidelines in format and size. Specifically, drafts may, of course, be shorter and be partially incomplete, but they should not exceed the maximum number of pages.
• As a minimum, all papers should include an abstract, as well as draft versions of key sections, particularly highlighting contributions, methodology, experiments, results, and conclusions. It is acceptable for some sections to be only minimally developed, e.g. as bullet points.
• Participants are encouraged to include clearly highlighted questions and areas for discussion in their draft papers.
• To apply to the PDW, please indicate your interest in the registration form. The PDW team will contact you after that to provide more instructions.

1. Successful applicants will be notified before the conference starts, and as soon as possible.
2. IEEE CIS members will be given priority access to the PDW, and in the event of oversubscription, reviewer scores of the applicants’ accepted conference papers will be considered.