The goal of this travel grant is to broaden the audience attending the premier network protocol conference, the IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), and as a result, raise the level of interaction and the potential for new collaborations, new investigations, and higher quality research. Support from the National Science Foundation is requested on behalf of graduate students attending institutions in the United States.
Intellectual Merit: By supporting graduate students to attend ICNP 2013, this grant will increase the dissemination of the conference research results to a larger and a more diverse audience, which otherwise would not have been able to attend. In so doing, this proposal will contribute to the strength and inclusiveness of the research community, and will lead to the long-term health and vitalization of ICNP. In addition, preference in grant awards to women and under-represented students will hopefully increase the participation among these groups. By advertising to a wide range of colleges and universities, participants from a more diverse set of institutions should be able to attend and benefit from the conference. A broad, as well as diverse population is key to the health of the research community and the discipline.
Broader Impacts: Conference attendance is a crucial part of the life of a researcher. By creating new opportunities for students, especially those from under-represented groups to attend a high-quality conference, this project will benefit the research community in several ways. The students themselves benefit from the opportunity to meet and interact with many other researchers in a favorable setting, and from seeing research presented that may be related to what they are working on, or may inspire them to try a new direction. The research community benefits from the improvement of the students in the pipeline, and the introduction of new researcher perspectives. Additionally, everybody benefits from increased diversity of participants attending the conference.
, that was held in Göttingen, Germany, from October 7 to 10, 2013. It supported 9 students from seven US institutions, with $1500 travel grant to each. It was a significant experience to all travel grant recipients, and their participation in the conference was definitely felt. The student researchers benefited from the opportunity to meet and interact with many other researchers in a favorable setting. They became exposed to top research presented that were either related to what they are working on or inspiring to them on new research directions. It may even have calalyzed a small group of elite graduate students to become more excited in considering networking research and development for their career path. Meanwhile, everybody at the conference benefited from the increased diversity of attendants at the conference. Overall, this travel grant increased the dissemination of the conference research results to a larger and a more diverse audience, some of which otherwise would not have been able to attend, and helped raise the level of interaction at the ICNP 2013 and the potential for new collaborations and new investigations. It is beneficial to the strength and inclusiveness of the networking research community in general, and the long-term health and vitalization of the ICNP conference in particular.
