The funding from NSF will provide partial support of participant travel to the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, 64th Annual DFD Meeting 2011 in Baltimore, MD, November 20-22, 2011. This is the largest international annual meeting of fluid dynamicists in the world, with 2000 anticipated attendees. The meeting has been successfully run for over sixty years.
The chief intellectual merit of this conference lies in the exchange of scientific ideas, presentations of cutting edge research, and exposure to a richly diverse array of topics in virtually every sub-discipline of fluid dynamics. The broader impact will be to increase participation of students and young scientists in the US who would not otherwise be able to afford to travel to the meeting and pay associated costs. Preference for awarding the NSF sponsored funds is given: (i) to those presenting talks at the meeting, (ii) to those who have not received such an award in the past, and (iii) to no more than one applicant from a given research advisor. Since the awards are meant to supplement participant travel funds, not to cover these entirely, the committee takes into account the travel budget entered on the application. Special effort is made to achieve diverse participation from underrepresented groups in engineering, including women and members of minority groups.
The grant was used in its entirety to supplement the travel of students from US institutions to attend the annual meeting of the American Physical Society (APS), Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) annual meeting, held November 20-22, 2011 in Baltimore, MD. Forty-one students received $500 travel supplements out of over 100 applications from US institutions. Complementary funds from other sources funded international travel awards. The application and selection process was conducted by the DFD External Affairs Committee, chaired by Prof. Jonathan Freund (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Briefly, in the application review process each member of the External Affairs Committee read each of the applications and ranked them according to the priorities of the travel grant program (emphasis is given to students, young scientists, and, in general, scientists from under-represented groups). Consideration was also given to the availability of funds to complement the travel award, clarity of the abstract, and the perceived quality of the scientific work described in the abstract. The individual committee member rankings were averaged, and the awardees were chosen based on the strongest overall scores. Offer letters were sent to the awardees, and those who accept were sent follow-up invitation letters that may be used for visa applications, as appropriate.
