The project supports graduate student participation in the 27th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2010). Specifically, the project supports travel to the conference for those who might not otherwise be able to attend for financial reasons and organizes a student poster-presentation program that will facilitate one-on-one discussions and other mentoring with the world's leading researchers in machine learning. Students are exposed to state-of-the-art work by other researchers and have the opportunity to attend tutorials on material that is not taught at their home institutions. Participating students receive feedback from senior researchers beyond their institutional and national boundaries. Furthermore, participation in the poster session and conference helps to integrate these students into the research community and represents a natural integration of research and education.
Overview The 2010 scholarship program received applications from 48 students. We offered scholarships to 44 students (30 from the US), ranging in travel NSF's generous $30,000 grant for student travel was especially welcome for ICML-2010, since travel costs to Haifa were relatively high. As an international conference, ICML was very fortunate to have the NSF grant funds supplemented by a $15,000 grant from the Air Force, which allowed us to provide strong support for our US scholarship applicants. In addition, gift funds from corporate sponsors including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and IBM, among others, were used to support foreign scholarship applicants. Overall, ICML was able to fund a total of 42 of 48 student applicants. There were thirty applicants from the United States, all of whom were funded, thanks to the NSF and Air Force support. Each US scholar was provided with $1600 for travel, with the exception of second and third authors whose first author also received travel support which received $850 each. The technical program for ICML-2010 was very strong and it gave students (and other attendees) a wonderful chance to meet people, become energized, and to learn about the field. ICML was, as always, quite selective in its choice of papers, accepting 152 out of 594 submitted papers. Each paper was presented both orally and as a poster. There were also four excellent invited talks, from Robert Aumann, Tom Mitchell, Nir Friedman, and Duncan Watts. Costs and Accounting The 2010 scholarship program received applications from 48 students. We offered scholarships to 44 students (30 from the US), ranging in travel funds from $400 to $900 for International Students and $850 and $1600 for US students. Two international students who were offered travel scholarships had to cancel because of Visa issues. The total funding given to support students in 2010 was $55,000. The program was funded through NSF, the Air Force and through contributions from private sources. All students who applied and had accepted papers at the conference or associated workshops received support. Information about the 30 US scholars that were supported in part by the NSF funds is included at the end of the report. Summary In summary, the Student Poster and Travel Program for the 2010 International Conference on Machine Learning was extremely successful and enabled a number of students to attend the conference who otherwise might not have been able to attend. Moreover, the design of the program insured that students received valuable feedback on their research. Those of us on the Board of the International Machine Learning Society (IMLS) that organizes the ICML Conference are grateful for the continued support from NSF that has (and continues to) help many young researchers and improve the quality of the annual ICML meeting.
