This year, I was part of an effort to re-design the Doctoral Consortium program to an expanded Student Mentoring Program at CHI2026. This year’s CHI was the largest ever, taking place in Barcelona.

The SMP evolves from CHI’s traditional Doctoral Consortium to a broader initiative that will cater to the needs of students at different stages of their career and give special attention to those who may need guidance the most. We are growing the program in terms of the number of participating students, trying to host a cohort that’s as diverse as possible, and expanding it to include new activities, going beyond the traditional deep dives into students’ research.

The renewed SMP thus reflects a changed vision centered on broadening access to resources for a wider range of early career scholars. It will provide them with resources to navigate CHI and, more broadly, their career in Human-Computer Interaction. Inclusivity is an important facet of this new program: we hope to accommodate more diverse students than in previous years, and efforts will be placed on supporting students who may lack institutional resources and mentorship for success. This program also extends a traditional Doctoral Consortium format to include a broader range of activities. While we will accommodate space for in-depth research discussions, as a traditional DC would do, we will also foster an environment where students at different career stages can network both with mentors and other peers. The program will have space for career guidance, for focused feedback and research dialogue, as well as opportunities for students to build the cohort with whom they’ll hopefully make lifelong friends and colleagues. We’ll host panels, roundtable discussions, poster sessions, and networking activities, trying to foster research exchange as much as we support students to find their own space within the CHI community. Some of these activities will require applying, and some will be open to all.

Overall, the SMP will allow a broad range of students at different stages of their career to:

• Gain new ideas and perspectives on their research directions;
• Support each other by constructively offering their feedback to the other attending students;
• Form new connections with other attendees, together becoming a supportive cohort of emerging scholars with a spirit of collaborative research; and
• Engage with the full CHI conference by participating in many of the events and opportunities that CHI offers, and by enjoying interactions with other CHI attendees.

One of the three activities was hosting CHI101, a short talk and panel about tips and tricks on how to navigate CHI.