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ACM SIGCOMM, with support from MCI, Cisco, and Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., is pleased to announce that it will be making several grants to Ph.D. students to attend ACM SIGCOMM '95 in Boston. This grant program is patterned after a very successful travel grant program funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation for ACM SIGCOMM '94. SIGCOMM intends to make this an annual program.
The purpose of the program is to encourage student participation in the conference by providing travel funds to students who would not otherwise be able to attend the conference. In 1994, the NSF program gave travel grants to ten students (chosen from forty-three applicants).
Applications and supporting letters for a student travel grant should be emailed to the grant committee chair (Craig Partridge, craig@bbn.com) by June 19, 1995. Applicants will be informed of the committee's decision no later than July 12th.
An application should contain a letter from the student indicating why the student believes she or he would benefit from attending ACM SIGCOMM, and the cost of round-trip travel from the student's city to Cambridge, Massachusetts (where the conference will be held). The student's letter should include (1) a brief summary of research interests and accomplishments to date; (2) a description of areas reflected in SIGCOMM program that would impact the student's research; and (3) why the conference attendance is important to this student.
In addition, the student's advisor should send a letter of recommendation to the committee, indicating why the advisor believes the student would benefit from attending the conference and confirming that the student is a Ph.D. candidate in good standing. This letter should include (1) the advisor's view on the suitability of the SIGCOMM program material to the student's research area; (2) ways this particular student would benefit from attendance at the conference; and (3) the advisor's opinion about the strengths and potential contributions of the student.
One of the goals of the travel grant program is to encourage participation in the SIGCOMM conference by students from traditionally under-represented groups. The committee expects to give a modest preference to women and minority candidates, and to award at least one full travel grant to a student from a university outside of North America.
While student authors of papers to be presented at SIGCOMM may apply, the committee strongly prefers to give grants to students who are not paper authors. (The committee believes it is the responsibility of the student's faculty advisor or university to provide travel funding to present a paper).
Each grant will be a maximum amount to be reimbursed. The amount is intended to be sufficient to cover the student's travel (train or economy airfare), food and hotel for three nights, and student registration fee for the conference (but not conference tutorials). It is the student's responsibility for expenses in excess of the grant amount -- ACM SIGCOMM will only reimburse up to the approved amount.
Applications will be evaluated by a grant committee of Craig Partridge (chair, BBN/Stanford University, USA), Lillian Cassel (Villanova University, USA), Alden Jackson (Sandia National Laboratories, USA), and A. Gill Waters (University of Kent at Canterbury, UK). Committee members will not be involved in the evaluation of students from their own institutions.
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