This grant provides support to broaden participation in the Twenty-first International Conference on Parallel Architecture and Compilation Techniques (PACT12), to be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota on September 19-23, 2012. PACT is the premiere forum to bring together researchers from architecture, compilers, applications and languages to present and discuss innovative research of common interests. The grant will primarily fund US citizens/residents, and the highest priority will be given to under-represented groups. Attending the conference is an important educational/training experience for the participants and helps create the next generation of researchers in this area.
We received $12,000 to support travel grants for students who attended PACT 2012. To augment the $12,000 from the NSF, we also obtained $3,000 from IEEE TCCA, and $7,000 from ACM SIGARCH, bringing the total amount of travel grant awards to $22,000. We awarded total 38 full-time students, among which 23 students are supported by the funding from NSF. The award amounts were determined by a mix of merit (e.g., presenting author, co-author, or attendee) and need (as demonstrated by both the raw costs for each student and whether their faculty advisor wrote a letter of support indicating that they could not provide funds). We were able to support all the students who applied for a grant. Students who participated PACT 2012 got the chance to attend the conference reception and banquet and met with researchers from architecture, compilers, applications and languages. This is important for them to build up their own social networks, and succeed in their future career. The actual award amount given to each student was determined based on the following priorities: (1) Conference presenters, (2) Workshop/poster presenters, (3) Paper co-authors, and (4) Conference participants (with no papers). For category (1), we supported $650 with the hope of covering 40~50% of the actual cost to the student to make the award meaningful. For category (2) and (3), we simply gave $520. For the last category, we gave $400 to at least cover the student’s conference registration fee. Among the 23 travel grant awardees, there are 13 paper presenters, 7 workshop/poster presenters, 2 paper co-authors, and 1 conference attendee with no papers. Priority is given to under-represented minorities during the NSF funds distribution process. For instance, there are 4 female students among the 23 awardees, it implies that 18% of the student awardees supported by NSF are female. Moreover, four student awardees have U.S. citizenship or are U.S. permanent residents. There was no student from other under-represented groups (e.g. Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Blacks or African Americans, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders, and Persons with Disabilities) applying for the travel grant. We would put more efforts on publicity in the future events to attract more under-represented minorities, therefore, increasing the breadth and diversity of participation in the conference. The following table captures the list of students we supported with the NSF fund # Name School Category*** Minority 1 Ausavarungnirun, Rachata Carnegie Mellon University (2) 2 Chidambaram, Nachiappan Pennsylvania State University (2) 3 Ding, Wei Pennsylvania State University (2) 4 Ghosh, Priyanka University of Houston (2) Female 5 Goodstein, Michelle Carnegie Mellon University (1) Female, U.S. citizen 6 Goswami, Nilanjan University of Florida (2) 7 Kamruzzaman, Md University of California, San Diego (1) 8 Li, Yong University of Pittsburgh (3) 9 Liu, Cong University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1) 10 Ma, Kai Ohio State University (1) 11 Manville, Thomas University of Michigan (1) U.S. citizen 12 Pekhimenko, Gennady Carnegie Mellon University (1) 13 Ren, Bin Ohio State University (2) 14 Sawalha, Lina University of Oklahoma (2) Female 15 Schaa, Dana Northeastern University (3) U.S. citizen 16 Seshadri, Vivek Carnegie Mellon University (1) 17 Sharifi, Akbar Pennsylvania State University (1) 18 Sudan, Kshitij University of Utah (1) 19 Tan, Jingweijia University of Kansas (1) Female 20 Tuohy, William University of Minnesota (4) U.S. citizen 21 Wang, Hao University of Wisconsin - Madison (1) 22 Wang, Lei Texas A&M University (1) 23 Yang, Yi North Carolina State University (1) ***(1) Paper presenter; (2) Workshop/poster presenter; (3) Paper co-author; and (4) Attendee.
