Guidelines and Instructions for Special Sessions in the AIMS Conference

What makes the AIMS conferences unique and outstanding has been its well-organized special sessions in large number and broad spectrum, organized by leading researchers in the chosen areas. Each special session works like a separate workshop in its own right, and the AIMS Conference works like a congress attracting thousands of peers. As a consequence, many research groups plan to showcase their research development in the AIMS conference by inviting international colleagues and collaborators to speak in their sessions.

Here are the guidelines for organizing a special session in the AIMS conference.

1. Proposals from potential organizers are welcome. It should contain the names of all the organizers and their affiliations and email accounts, a title and abstract of the session. It may help if it also lists some potential speakers in the session. Once approved by the Committee, the organizers should promptly invite the speakers.

2. Each session should have a minimum of 12 speakers, so as to ensure a good size of audience.

3. Each speaker will be given 30 minutes for the presentation and question answering.

4. All speakers and the organizers are required to pay for the registration. The conference is self-supported by its registration fees, which will be used exclusively for the conference covering the program, lunches, coffee and refreshment, equipment rental, transportation and student helpers, to name a few. There is no external funding, except some limited NSF travel support for graduate students and new Ph.Ds.

5. As a token of appreciation, session organizers are invited, free of charge, to the conference banquet gala.

6. Sessions of the highest quality may be invited to publish a special issue in an AIMS journal.

7. Some sessions of close topics may get merged if not enough speakers are secured.

8. Each conference participant can speak in no more than two sessions.

9. Each session may not have more than three organizers.