TTTC’s E. J. McCluskey Best Doctoral Thesis 2026 Award Contest
Named after Prof. E. J. McCluskey, a key contributor to the field of test technology, the 2026 TTTC’s Doctoral Thesis Award serves the purpose to promote most impactful doctoral student work, to provide the students with the exposure to the community and the prospective employers, and to support interaction between academia and industry in the field of test technology.
TTTC’s E.J. McCluskey Best Doctoral Thesis Award will be given to the winning student of the doctoral student contest and his or her advisor.
The contest is held in two stages: semi-finals and finals. In 2026, semi-finals will be held at the IEEE VLSI Test Symposium (VTS), the IEEE European Test Symposium (ETS), the IEEE Latin American Test Symposium (LATS) and the IEEE Asian Test Symposium (ATS). At each semi-final, a jury composed of academia and industrial experts will determine the winner, and the four winners will compete against each other in the finals, held at the International Test Conference (ITC) 2026.
Submission Guidelines: All submissions must follow the structure provided in the official template to ensure that each candidate presents the crucial aspects of their work, enabling experts to make an adequate assessment against the evaluation criteria.
Eligibility: All four semi-final sites are seeking submissions from active doctoral students working on test-related topics. An individual can only participate in the contest once in a lifetime. Prospective participants are encouraged to participate when they are close to thesis completion and have obtained sufficient results. Submissions to multiple regional sites are prohibited.
Format Requirements:
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- Cover page: One page with candidate details using the provided table format in the template
- Main Content: 2 pages covering the following aspects: Motivation & Challenges, Scientific Contribution Description, Impact (on academia or on industry level) with Respect to State-of-the-Art, and Key Obtained Results of the PhD
- References and Publications: 1 page for references and list of publications
Formatting Specifications: The minimum font size allowed is 10 points (including tables and figures). The page size is A4, and all margins (top, bottom, left, right) should be at least 15 mm (not including headers or footers).
Publication: If accepted, all contestants will be asked to submit a camera-ready version (including the 2-page summary and 1-page list of references) to be included as a section in a VTS 2026 Contest Publication, which will be part of the conference proceedings and available in IEEE Xplore.
Prospective contestants must submit a document following this template.
Submission deadline: January 9, 2026 February 10, 2026
Contact persons:
- Local coordinator: Leticia Bolzani Poehls (leticia@poehls.com)
- Global coordinator: Marcello Traiola (marcello.traiola@inria.fr)