The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) and the International Committee on Computational Linguistics (ICCL) are two primary international organizations in the field of natural language processing and language engineering. For over forty years, the two organizations have sponsored conferences to facilitate the exchange of research ideas. This year, the two organizations will co-host a joint conference from July 17th to July 21st, 2006, in Sydney, Australia. It is the major international conference for the field. This award subsidizes the expenses for students selected to participate in the Student Research Workshop associated with the main COLING-ACL conference. The students-only workshop allows participants to present their research and receive feedback from a panel of established researchers in the field. The forum provides students the opportunities to gain exposures to external perspectives on their work at a critical time in their professional development. The intimate format encourages students to begin building rapport with established researchers. The Student Research Workshop contributes to the maintenance and development of a skilled and diverse computational natural language workforce, helping to produce a pool of future researchers for Natural Language Engineering. The workshop encourages a spirit of collaborative research, and builds a supportive environment for a new generation of computational linguists.
