This project will support approximately 10-15 U.S.-based graduate students to attend the 11th USENIX Symposium on File and Storage Technology (FAST), which is scheduled to take place February 12-15, 2013. FAST is a leading forum for innovative research in storage systems, bringing together researchers and practitioners from both industry and academia. Topics include reliability, performance, mobility, power management, measurement, and other areas germane to file and storage systems. Participation in leading conferences is an extremely important part of the graduate school experience, providing the opportunity to interact with more senior researchers and to be exposed to leading edge work.
The 11th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST ’13) brings together file and storage system researchers and practitioners to explore new directions in the design, implementation, evaluation and deployment of storage systems. The FAST ‘13 technical program included 24 technical papers, as well as Work-in-Progress reports (WiPs), and two poster sessions. The papers represent some of the outstanding work in the area, with topics including file systems, caching, data protection, deduplication, flashand SSDs, and more. The conference was held in San Jose, CA February 13 – 15, 2013. Criteria for selection of USENIX student stipends: The USENIX Association offers stipends to most conferences we host. Any student enrolled full-time at an accredited university or college is welcome to apply for a stipend. Stipends have two components: registration costs and expenses. For those students selected, USENIX covers the registration costs by providing students with a complimentary registration code. For the expense portion, USENIX provides a check to assist the student with costs related to airfare and hotel. Variations in the amount of offers depends on how far a student will need to travel and the amount they request (i.e., some students may stay with a friend in the town of the conference, and therefore, do not need the hotel expense). We confirm that the students register and attend the event. We do not require that students provide us with a detailed accounting of how the funds were spent. • Students who are participating in the conference - e.g. presenting a poster • Students whose areas of study significantly overlap with the conference topics and who write a concise essay (supporting statement) outlining their research • First-time applicants and those who have not received a stipend in the past 12-months • Students who are willing to volunteer at the conference (this generally consists of writing a summary of technical session(s) for ;login:, the USENIX journal) • Students from institutions not traditionally represented at USENIX events • Student members of the Association (not required) • Class level and financial need USENIX received 51 stipend applications from students, and 47 were funded. Some of the funds were covered by the $12,000 from the NSF, and all NSF grant recipients were enrolled at US universities. USENIX appreciates the financial support of the NSF, which allowed us to grant awards to many more qualified applicants than we would have been able to otherwise. There were 462 total attendees at FAST ‘13. Of these, 390 were from the US. Non-US attendees came from: Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Norway, Poland, Russian Federation, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, and United Kingdom.
