SIGCOMM is the flagship annual conference of the Special Interest Group on Data Communications, a special interest group of the Association for Computing Machinery. This award assists approximately 12 graduate students and 3 postdoctoral students from US institutions to attend this conference. Participation in conferences such as SIGCOMM is an extremely important part of the graduate school experience, provides students with an opportunity to interact with more senior researchers and exposes them to leading edge research in the field. The support requested in this proposal will enable people in the above categories to attend the main SIGCOMM 2009 conference, who would be otherwise unable to do so. 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 US-based graduate and postdoctoral students to attend the main SIGCOMM 2009 conference. SIGCOMM is the flagship conference in the networking community and a highly competitive venue (with acceptance rate around 10%). Its rich program exposes participants to new ideas and cutting-edge research and allows for interaction between researchers from all over the world.
Broader Impact: First, 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. The proposed student participation is expected to have a positive impact on the students? research interests and quality. Second, the project will promote diversity by encouraging and enabling women and other under-represented minorities to participate. Furthermore, the truly international flavor of SIGCOMM 2009 cultivates international research interactions and presents a tremendous opportunity to students to increase their breadth of ideas, research approaches, and technical perspectives.
