This award provides funding for the support of student travel to the Winter Simulation Conference 2012, Berlin, Germany, 9-12 December 2012. Specifically, the students will be attending the PhD Colloquium (workshop) followed by the technical conference. The abstracts of the students' work will be published in the WSC2012 proceeding, which has wide distribution. The WSC PhD colloquia have been highly successful in providing a forum for the initial socialization into the field of young doctoral scholars; many of today's leading simulation researchers participated as students in earlier colloquia.
This travel grant will encourage the interaction of the US emerging scholars with their counterparts and senior researchers from Europe and elsewhere, increasing the international awareness of the participating US students. The PIs will work with the conference organizers to identify and include the broadest possible group of highly qualified PhD students, especially those coming from under-represented groups.
The project has supported 17 graduate students from 15 schools in the United States to attend a PhD Colloquium (workshop). The event took place in conjunction with the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) 2012 on Dec 9-12, 2012 in Berlin, Germany, the premier international forum for disseminating recent advances in the field of system simulation. The WSC PhD Colloquia has brought together the best of the next generation of simulation researchers and allowed them to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers. Most of student participants made presentations (oral or poster) of their research during the PhD Colloquium (workshop). In addition, the student participants interacted with other professionals participating in WSC 2012 during the PhD Colloquium on December 9, with follow up activities during the technical program of the conference. Being in Europe, the WSC2012 in Germany attracted more European researchers than WSCs in the past, so it encouraged the interaction of the US students with their counterparts and researchers from Europe, increasing the international awareness of the participating US students. Student participation in international forums was an important part of their education and a great way to build a mature workforce in scientific research (modeling and simulation in particular). The abstracts of the students' work were published in the WSC2012 proceeding (see http://informs-sim.org/), which had wide distribution.
