The 3rd International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT) will be held December 10-13, 2007 at the Columbia University campus in New York. CoNEXT 2007 is sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM, which is ACM's Special Interest Group on Data Communications. This award will assist approximately 12 United States-based graduate students in attending this conference. Participation in conferences such as CoNEXT is an extremely important part of the graduate school experience, providing students an opportunity to interact with more senior researchers and to be exposed to leading edge research in the field. There is also a special student workshop that will be organized with CoNEXT that is especially oriented to: (i) further such opportunities, (ii) allow students to get targeted feedback on their work, (iii) inform them about good strategies for conducting effective research, and (iv) educate them about different career paths past their degrees. The support requested in this proposal will enable students to participate in this workshop and to attend the CoNEXT 2007 conference, who would be other-wise unable to do either. The travel grant chairs are committed to encouraging the participation of women and under-represented minorities.
Intellectual Merit: This project proposes to provide travel support for graduate students to attend CoNEXT 2007 and the associated workshops, which includes the student workshop and a workshop on future Internet design. This rich program will expose them to new ideas and allow for interaction with other researchers. In particular, the student workshop is geared to provide students an opportunity to present their current work, to receive explicit verbal as well as documented feedback on their work and their oral presentations, and to expose them to important issues such as how technical papers should be written to improve dissemination of results and how research problems should be judged for relevance and potential for impact.
Broader Impact: This project integrates research and education of students through exposure to a premier technical meeting in computer networks and communications. Students will have the opportunity to observe high-quality presentations and interact with senior researchers in the field both in the main conference and the associated workshops. The proposed student participation will have a positive impact on students' interest and the quality of their research. Women and other minorities will be encouraged to participate. Among the papers submitted to the conference, the US has the single largest number of authors (approximately one-third). However, the remaining authors of submitted papers span 28 other countries. This diversity is also in evidence from the composition of the technical program committee of the conference. This truly international flavor of CoNEXT 2007, therefore, presents a tremendous opportunity to students to increase their breadth of ideas, research approaches, and technical perspectives.
