ACM SIGCOMM 2013, August 12-16, 2013, Hong Kong, China
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ACM SIGCOMM 2013 Travel Grants

This year, as in years past, the Conference Organizing Committee is working hard to provide as much travel support to as many conference attendees as possible. Travel support has been provided from many different supporting organizations. Through this support, we will be able to assist dozens of attendees.

Support is provided for a variety of different types of attendees, from graduate students to post-doctoral scholars. The amount of support depends on the type of attendee and available funding. Attendees from around the world are encouraged to apply.

Support for SIGCOMM 2013 travel grants will be available to encourage students, post-docs, and young faculty early in their career, no matter which university you are working at. We would like to encourage all of you to apply, and we gratefully acknowledge the support we receive from the following organizations:

  • NSF Support: travel grants are available for full time graduate students and post-docs enrolled at U.S. University.
  • ACM SIGCOMM GeoDiversity travel grants are available for attendees in their early career (at most five years of full-time, full-level, non-postdoc, post-PhD employment) from under-represented countries, based on need, distance to the conference venue, and impact of their attendance in increasing the diversity of conference participation.
  • ACM SIGCOMM GeoDiversity travel grants are available specifically for Chinese students to attend the conference.
  • The KC Wong and the Huawei Foundations provided additional support to encourage Chinese students.
  • ACM SIGCOMM GeoDiversity fund will cover travel and accomodation costs for non-US and non Chinese students.
  • Google and Verisign also provided funds to support a broader and larger student participation, including from China and the rest of the world.

Please consider the following important information before applying:

  • The application process is the same for all types of attendees and all sources of funding and is described in the rest of this page.
  • Travel grant awards are meant to “partially” cover the cost of attending and participating in SIGCOMM 2013. The only travel expenses that can be reimbursed are: air travel, hotel, and conference registration.
  • Note that the award recipients will need to pay for the expenses ahead of time and get reimbursed after the conference.
  • The exact number of awards will depend on the availability of funds and will be determined as funding amounts are finalized.
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Selection Criteria

The following criteria will be used in the selection process:

  1. Preference will be given to applicants that do not present a paper in the conference. The rationale for this criterion is that the participation costs for a presenting author should be covered by their home institution.
  2. Students presenting posters are encouraged to apply though. The rationale is to support the participation of students who do not present papers but contribute to the conference in other ways.
  3. Evidence of a serious interest in networking, as demonstrated by coursework and/or project experience, will be required. Advanced students close to graduation or in the job market will also be given priority, when possible.
  4. We also encourage participation of women and under-represented minorities. Special attention will be given to applicants from minority-serving institutions.
  5. After giving priority to the above criteria, (co-)authors of papers may be considered but will be given lower priority. The rationale is to support people that contribute to the conference and cannot attend otherwise due to budget or other constraints. (An example is a student who is a second author but does not present and would not be able to attend the conference otherwise. Another example is a postdoc who presents work with a past affiliation or without affiliation and thus is not supported neither by its past nor by its current institution. In both cases, the applicant and the letter-writer should explain in their letters why it is impossible to support the applicant from other sources.)

Supporters

ACM SIGCOMM thanks the following supporters, who make the 2013 travel grants program possible:

ACM SIGCOMM Google Huawei
Microsoft Research NSF Verisign

Important Dates

  • June 5, 2013 (23:59 PST)

    Travel Grant Application Submission Deadline

  • June 10, 2013 (23:59 PST)

    Travel Grant Award Notification

  • June 12, 2013 (23:59 PST)

    Deadline to Accept/Decline Travel Grant Award

Please note that since the website is on Chinese time, the deadline on the submission site appears as June 6th, 2013 3:59pm Chinese Standard Time (CST). In particular, CST does not stand for Central Standard Time.

Where and How to Apply

All application materials (applicant’s info, CV and and letters) should be submitted electronically to the following website:
http://nslab.ee.ntu.edu.tw/sigcomm_2013_travel_grants/

The applicant should create an account in the submission system and upload:

  1. an up-to-date CV
  2. an application letter, and
  3. a letter from their supervisor (Ph.D. advisor for students, Ph.D or postdoc advisor for postdocs, or supervisor for faculty/researchers).

The applicant’s letter should be clearly divided in the following sections:

  1. an explicit identification of (a) the applicant’s current country of study or work, (b) academic status (student, postdoc, or junior faculty member), and (c) whether the applicant qualifies for a GeoDiversity travel grant (see above);
  2. whether the applicant is a workshop paper or poster author; and whether the applicant will participate to the ACM Student Research Competition (SRC)
  3. a brief summary of where the applicant is studying/working (provide a URL for a home page if one exists) and the applicant’s advisor/supervisor is; the applicant feels is relevant to support their case;
  4. a brief summary of research interests and plans for future research; and
  5. why the conference attendance is important to the applicant’s research

The supervisor’s letter should be clearly divided in the following sections:

  1. the applicant’s good standing in the institution;
  2. explain why the applicant would benefit from attending SIGCOMM as well as how he/she could contribute to the conference; and
  3. explain the current funding status and why the applicant is in need of the travel grant.

Supervisor letters may either be uploaded directly into the applicant’s account (preferred) or may be emailed (PDF only!) to “stg-chairs at nslab.ee.ntu.edu.tw”. The submission site has been designed to keep supervisor letters “write-only”, i.e., the applicant will not be able to view the uploaded letter in their account.