This grant funds student travel to the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2014), to be held in June 2014 in Hyderabad, India. This is the flagship conference in the Software Engineering field for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences, etc. Funding for student travel has significant broader impacts because of the the opportunity it gives the students to become part of the research community, discuss their research with others, meet leaders in the field, and have experiences toward building the future, global workforce. The funds are for US-based students with attention to broadening participation from underrepresented groups.
The purpose of this project is to support student participants to travel to ICSE 2014 that was held on June 1-7, 2014 in Hyderabad, India. ICSE, the International Conference on Software Engineering, is the premier software engineering conference, providing a forum for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences and concerns in the field of software engineering. ICSE aims to provide students with useful guidance and feedback on various aspects of their research from established researchers and the other student attendees. It also helps student participants to establish a research and social network of their peers from around the world. ICSE'14 expanded on the success of previous ICSE conferences that established ICSE as an annual premier software engineering research event. ICSE'14 featured a program that spanned three days, consisting mostly of talks with three invited keynote talks by senior researchers. Particular attention was be given to the social program, with the goal of promoting socialization and discussions among students. ICSE'14 included industry representatives from Microsoft, Accenture, IBM and many local companies as well as Tata Consultancy Services, a long-time ICSE industrial supporter. To help achieve the ICSE's aims, this proposal funded 14 graduate students from US universities to enable their participation by means of traveling grants. The student grants were assigned based both on merit and financial need. Higher priority was assigned to students giving presentations and a strong emphasis will be put on supporting students from underrepresented groups. ICSE is a unique event of such magnitude in the software engineering field, and it is especially important that it is held in India where software engineering is becoming a major economic player. It fills in a hole in regional event landscape and presents a great opportunity to bring together the large number of research groups working in software engineering methods with research groups and practitioners from the region. Experience with ICSE'14 showed that this event was instrumental in creating and fostering vibrant international collaboration and offer invaluable learning and professional growth opportunities for students. Building a strong regional research network in software engineering, with industrial connections, will help strengthen regional collaborations among faculty, and networking and employment opportunities for students. For 14 sponsored graduate students who originate in the US, such an event helped build connections and the confidence to go on to graduate school, or advance further in academia. This helps strengthen the domestic talent pool for software engineering that is traditionally weak and US economy desperately needs well-rounded software engineering researchers. ICSE'14 also strengthens the regional connections between academia and industry, which, over the long term, can have a potent economic effect.
