Umeå's Student Conference in Computer Science is the highlight of the conference course in our Computer Science curriculum. The idea and objective of the course is to give the students a forum where they can develop their own ideas in a scientific manner, thereby improving their understanding of how research is conducted and how the achieved results should be presented according to scientific standards. The conference format was chosen to provide a comparatively realistic environment in which the research results can be presented.

A student who participates in the course first selects a topic and a number of research questions that he or she is interested in. If the topic is accepted, then the student outlines a paper and composes an annotated bibliography to give a survey of the field. The main work consists in conducting the actual research that answers the questions asked, and convincingly reporting the results in a scientific paper. Each submitted paper receives two or more reviews written by members of the department. If the reviews are favourable, the paper is accepted, meaning that the student is given the opportunity to present his/her work at the concluding conference, and to submit a final version that will be included in the proceedings. The course thus gives an introduction to independent research, scientific writing, and oral presentation.

This offering of the course was the fifteenth. The conference received nine submissions which were carefully reviewed by the reviewers listed on the following page. We are very grateful to the reviewers who did a very good job within a very short time frame. As a result of the reviewing process, seven submissions were accepted for presentation at the conference. Unfortunately, one of them was not revised in time for these proceedings. The remaining six constitute this volume.