Student Travel Grants

The purpose of the program is to encourage graduate student participation at the conference by partially or fully funding the travel costs of students who would otherwise be unable to attend. SIGCOMM 2004 thanks the National Science Foundation and HP Labs for funding the program this year.

Who Should Apply?

Applications are accepted from students at degree granting institutions throughout the world. The committee strongly prefers to give grants to students who are not paper authors (the committee believes that the advisor or university should cover costs from authors). Poster authors, however, are encouraged to apply. Other criteria will include evidence of a serious interest in networking, as demonstrated by coursework and project experience. In most cases, no more than one student will be funded from each school. ACM SIGCOMM encourages participation of women and under-represented minorities.

What is Covered?

The amount of support provided to each student is intended to cover the student's travel (economy airfare), registration, lodging at the conference hotel (four nights based on double occupancy), food, and local transportation. The breakdown of costs will differ based on the location of the recipient and is not expected to exceed $1000 for U.S. based students and $1600 for students from outside the U.S.

The travel award will be handled via reimbursement. For any expense that is covered, a receipt is required. An expense report form and other required forms will have to be turned in after the conference. The reimbursement will be sent as check via mail four to eight weeks after the documents are received. Details will be announced to the award recipients.

Who Decides?

The recipients of the travel grants will be decided by the student travel committee:

  • Tilman Wolf, Chair (University of Massachusetts at Amherst)
  • Christos Papadopoulos (University of Southern California)
  • Prashant Shenoy (University of Massachusetts at Amherst)
  • Marcel Waldvogel (IBM Research Zurich)

How to Apply?

An application for a travel grant will consist of a letter from the student and a recommendation letter from the student's advisor. The letter from the student should

  • indicate their affiliation and any other personal information the student feels is relevant to support their case.
  • indicate specifically any items regarding this year's conference (e.g., paper topics) that would favor their receipt of the grant over other applicants.
  • include a brief summary of research interests and accomplishments to date, contain a description of areas reflected in the SIGCOMM 2004 program that would impact the student's research,
  • include a short (1/2 page) vita, containing relevant coursework and grades.

In addition, the student's advisor should send a letter of recommendation to the committee. This letter should

  • confirm that the student is a Ph.D. candidate in good standing,
  • indicate why the student would benefit from attending the conference,
  • elaborate on the strengths and potential contributions of the student,
  • indicate current funding status, or explain why the student is in need of a travel grant.

Send application and recommendation letters by e-mail to: sigcomm04-travel@ecs.umass.edu in ASCII (highly preferable), PostScript, or PDF format ONLY.

Important Dates:

  • June 28, 2004, 17:00 EDT Application submission deadline
  • July 7, 2004 Notification date
  • July 14, 2004 Acceptance confirmation

Recipients will be required to accept the grant by this date, so that alternates can be notified in the event that a recipient declines. The early notification will assist in finding cheaper airline tickets.

Contact:

For any further questions, please contact Tilman Wolf (sigcomm04-travel@ecs.umass.edu).


 
Last Modified: February 11, 2004