This collaborative grant provides travel support to enable students to attend the Industrial and Systems Engineering Research Conference (ISERC) that will be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 18-22 May 2013. These funds will be leveraged through matching funds and support from various universities and the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) and will go a long way in reducing the travel cost burden on students and thereby improve student participation at the conference. It is expected that 20 to 100 students will benefit from these travel funds. Students form an integral part of ISERC of the registrations at the conference. Students participate in different ways including presenting papers and posters related to graduate and undergraduate research, attending technical sessions, participating in student competitions, scholarship award functions and so on. Strong student participation at ISERC has motivated a number of students to pursue graduate school options and event academic careers. Past data has shown that student attendance drops when the conference was held outside the continental US. NSF support will help maintain high student participation in ISERC 2013.
ISERC provides an excellent opportunity for students to broaden the impact of their work. Being one of the major annual conferences in the field of IE and OR, the ISERC is a venue for US and international researchers in both academia and industry to showcase research results and exchange ideas. In conjunction with the ISERC is the Applied Solution Conference, which focuses on solutions to industrial problems. The venue of the ISERC will bring together practitioners, vendors, and researchers in all related disciplines in industry, academia, government, and other organizations. The ISERC is an excellent opportunity for the students to network with peers, potential employers, or future collaborators. Another valuable opportunity for the students is to attend the Doctoral Colloquium organized by IIE. Students will join a special panel session led by experts in the field to discuss various topics of interest, including the job search, life in academia and industry, the tenure process, teaching, research, and professional service. Students will also have an opportunity to publish their work in a high quality conference proceedings indexed by ProQuest. Since ISERC 2013 is being held in Puerto Rico, it provides a unique opportunity to increase exposure of undergraduate Hispanic students from that region to their student peers pursuing graduate and research careers in the continental USA. Through the travel grant, the IE community would be able to increase the student participation at the conference.
The objective of this project is to provide travel support to students to enable them to attend the Industrial and Systems Engineering Research Conference (ISERC) that was held from May 18-22, 2013 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Overall 42 undergraduate and graduate students from 32 US universities have received a travel grant support of $225 to $300 to support their travel to the ISERC 2013 conference. Feedback about the support of this grant has been positive. Major activities of this grant include: (1) solicited matching support from US IE departments, (2) solicited matching support from IIE, (3) handled grant applications and made granting decisions, (4) host a grantee presentation at ISERC 2013 to allow NSF program managers to present grant certificates to awardees, and (5) issue checks to awardees and process travel reimbursement. Information about grant awardees was announced at the ISERC 2013 conference, to the CIEADH committee (comprised of heads of industrial engineering departments across the US), as well as to each applicant and their faculty advisor. Travel grant certificates were presented by the NSF program managers at a special function at the grantee meeting at ISERC 2013. A presentation about this travel grant was given to the CIEADH committee meeting during the conference. Reimbursement checks were sent to students by mail.
