This grant supports participation of approximately 10-12 graduate students from US institutions in the second instance of the Conference on Online Social Networks (COSN) of the Association for Computing Machinery, to be held in Dublin, Ireland, on October 1-2, 2014. Participation in conferences such as COSN is an extremely important part of the graduate school experience. Attendance at the conference will enhance the scientific workforce in this emerging research area by developing a group of promising young researchers interested in online social networks. The award will enable these young researchers to interact with other researchers and conference events; to learn of potential career paths within academia and industry; to access an international network of researchers who can support their professional development; and to observe the interdisciplinary nature, diversity and interrelationships of research in online social networks.
This project integrates research and education of students through exposure to a premier technical meeting in online social networks. 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. The project will promote diversity by encouraging and enabling women and other under-represented minorities to participate. Furthermore, the truly international flavor of COSN as an annual conference is reflected in the composition of the Technical Program Committee as well as the expected set of authors of papers.
