The grant will support student travel to the ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI'12) and a pre-conference workshop on discussing collaboration in research and education between US and Chinese researchers, titled Trends in Concurrency (TiC'12). The main conference, PLDI, is being held in Beijing, China. PLDI is a top conference in the field of programming language and compiler technology. Supporting student travel to attend professional conferences and workshops is a very important mission of the NSF. Broader impacts include building the next generation of researchers in this research area, as well as providing international experiences to build a globally-aware workforce.
The ACM Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) is the top tech- nical forum for the presentation of advances in programming languages and compiler research. The 2012 edition of PLDI and co-located events were held in Beijing, China, from June 11 to June 16, 2012. The full organizing committees and detailed programs (for conferences and satellite events) are available online at http://pldi12.cs.purdue.edu. The NSF provided $25,000 in travel support. ACM, via SIGPLAN (Special Interest Group on Programming Languages) provided additional travel support. NSF funds supported only US citizens and US permanent residents. US citizens and US permanent residents. The general strategy was to prioritize funding for women, underrepresented minorities, and student authors. The funding received for this proposal has enabled broader student participation, especially by those that may not have adequate support at their educational institution. In additions, we have expanded participation in the area of women and underrepresented minorities. Moreover, since the conference has been held in China, the travel funding provided has helped strengthen the ties between the US and Chinese student communities in programming languages, which will have benefits in both research and education. All in all 17 students (US citizens or permanent residents), out of which 3 were underrepresented minorities, were funded; 18% of the funds ($4,590 out of $25,000) went to travel support for under- represented minorities. To increase PLDI visibility and foster interaction among the grant awardees, we required awardees to post entries on the PLDI blog; we asked that one entry must be posted before the conference, where the awardees introduce themselves and say what they expect from the conference; further entries were posted during and after the conference, where awardees will discuss their PLDI experience and impressions. The blog has been a success and is publicly available at http://students-pldi.blogspot.com/. Some student testimonials, from the blog, underscore the importance of NSF travel support as being crucial to students’ being able to attend: "I am sincerely grateful for the opportunity to attend PLDI. I plan to graduate next semester, so I felt particularly lucky to have this opportunity to learn about the most current research first hand. [...] Given the location of this conference it was particularly difficult for graduate students from the US to attend without financial support, so I would like to extend a sincere thank you to those who helped make it possible." " Thanks to the NSF for the travel grant, and thanks to the organizers for a great conference. " " First things first, I just wanted to say how grateful I am for the generous travels grants that make travel to places like Beijing possible! " "HUGE SUCCESS. I had so many great experiences this PLDI [...] Finally, I want to extend my sincere thanks to all who were involved in organizing the conference, everyone who presented, the NSF for funding my trip."
