This is funding to support travel by 6 students currently enrolled in PhD programs in the United States to present their accepted papers and posters, and to take part in the Doctoral Consortium, at the upcoming Adaptive Hypermedia Conference, to be held July 28-August 1, 2008 in Hannover, Germany. User interfaces that adapt themselves to individual needs and preferences, or to available user information, are becoming increasingly important, so much so that adaptivity has become a selling point for software products. A system with the ability to construct and consult user models can adapt diverse aspects of its performance to individual users or user groups, thus enhancing its effectiveness, usability and/or acceptance in a wide variety of situations. This leads to the concept of adaptive hypermedia as providing the underpinning of personalized interfaces that can successfully deal with information overload while improving the quality of information retrieval and filtering, information restructuring and annotation, information visualization, etc. But as Web sites explore ways to personalize, they must also investigate the effect of such algorithms on privacy, efficiency, and our ability to disseminate new information. In addition to the ubiquitous Web applications, educational applications and applications oriented to users with different kinds of disabilities can also benefit from adaptive systems. The International Conferences on Adaptive Hypermedia is the major forum for the scientific exchange and presentation of research in adaptive hypermedia and adaptive Web-based systems, held biannually; AH 2008 will be the 5th event in the series, and represents the marriage of the Adaptive Hypermedia and User Modeling communities, both of which are major sponsors. Active participation of young researchers in the conference is very important, both for the health of the field and for the researchers themselves. The AH 2008 Doctoral Consortium provides a unique opportunity for PhD students partway through their dissertation research to gain wider exposure in the community for their innovative work, and to obtain feedback and guidance from senior people in the field. Experience has shown that most Doctoral Consortium participants at past UM and AH conferences were later able to expand and publish their work originally presented at the Consortium.
Broader Impacts: Bringing young and creative researchers to AH 2008 will help advance an important and socially valuable research field. For many graduate students, the cost of attending the conference exceeds their travel budget. Thus, NSF funding will significantly impact the careers of the next generation of researchers, by enabling a number of them to take part in an important event they would otherwise have to miss. Participation will also help foster a sense of community among these young researchers, by allowing them to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development. The PI has indicated that she will act to assure participation by members of traditionally under-represented institutions, and will pay close attention to inclusion of minorities and women.
