How two students from St. Petersburg made it to AAAI — the largest AI conference in Singapore

Two students from St. Petersburg completed a full academic journey — from writing a research paper and nervously awaiting reviews to meeting world-leading scientists in person at the AAAI poster session in Singapore.

What is AAAI and why target it

AAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) is one of the oldest and most authoritative academic conferences on AI. It stands alongside NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR: these are the venues where papers are published that later become the foundation for products at Google, Meta, and OpenAI. Getting there is not easy.

The paper acceptance rate rarely exceeds 20%, meaning four out of five submitted papers are filtered out during the review stage. An accepted paper is not just a line in a resume, but an entry ticket to the community of people shaping the direction of the entire industry. This year, the conference took place in Singapore.

Two students from St. Petersburg headed there — not as tourists, but as authors of an accepted research paper. Their experience shows from the inside how the international AI academic world works.

How the selection process works

The path to presenting at AAAI is much more complex than simply "write a paper and send it." The authors describe each stage:

• Submission — strict format, volume restrictions, mandatory compliance with conference standards
• Blind review — several reviewers read the paper anonymously, without knowing the authors' names
• Rebuttal — after receiving reviews, authors can write a response to criticism before the program committee makes its final decision
• Waiting — weeks of uncertainty while the committee processes thousands of submitted papers from around the world
• Poster session — authors of accepted papers present their research in person, speaking directly with interested participants

The authors highlight rebuttal as a key and often underestimated tool: a well-written response to reviewer criticism can change the final decision. The students explain how to build a proper argument and what to focus on.

What happens on site

Singapore proved to be not just an exotic backdrop, but also an appropriate venue for intensive idea exchange among scientists from around the world. Poster sessions are arranged so that any participant can approach the author directly and talk without prior registration or formal protocol. Leading researchers, whose names appear in the headlines of the most cited papers, stand nearby and are ready to discuss details — this is a fundamental difference between a live conference and watching recorded talks online.

"No video can replace a conversation at a poster, where a leading

scientist can break down your work in twenty minutes," — such is the essence of why scientists spend money and time on attending in person.

The authors also honestly discuss the practical side of the trip: how to plan logistics and budget, how to navigate a program with dozens of parallel tracks, and how not to get lost among thousands of participants.

What this means

The story of two St. Petersburg students is a practical guide for anyone considering an international academic career in AI. Conferences at the level of AAAI remain the main gateway to the global scientific community: this is where connections are made that turn into joint projects, internships, and positions at leading research laboratories around the world.

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