ICS provides funding for ICS student travel to conferences and for student
research. Students in any member department may apply for funds. Travel
funds may be applied for whether the student is presenting at or simply
attending an interdisciplinary conference. These guidelines detail the
requirements for, limitations in, and process for student travel and research
funding. For information on student travel reimbursement, click here.
The funds are administered by a student Travel/Research Award Committee
consisting of one representative from each member department
. Each department selects its own method for choosing a student representative.
This committee is responsible for announcing the award each semester and
allocating available funds. Applications for the ICS Student Travel and
Research Awards are available to ICS student members through any of the
committee members, the ICS office, or the web. Students are expected to
explore ALL possible sources for funding which might be available
from the Graduate School, Home Department, or Research Grants BEFORE
approaching the ICS awards committee. ICS travel and research awards will
be distributed three times per year; Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters.
Eligibility for Travel Award
Student should be actively enrolled in the certificate program (must
be taking courses/making appropriate progress, not just enrolled), OR
should have already received the certificate. Student must have completed Issues and Methods in Cognitive Science.
Student should explore all other possible sources for funding which
might be available from the Graduate School, his/her home department,
and/or research grants BEFORE approaching the ICS awards committee.
Student should apply for funds BEFORE conference. An exception can be
made if the student found out about or decided to attend a conference
after the previous funding deadline but before the next funding
cycle, or if there are other extenuating timing issues. Such requests
for an exception must be explained in the application.
Conferences must either be interdisciplinary, or if in the student's
major discipline, the work being presented must be interdisciplinary.
If the student is only attending and not presenting, the conference
must either be interdisciplinary or not in the student's major
discipline (for example, a computer science student attending a
linguistics conference).
Travel required to complete an interdisciplinary research project
will be considered for funding at the committee's discretion.
Examples of conferences counted as interdisciplinary:
Cognitive Science Society Conference
Human-Computer interaction Conference
Artificial Intelligence Conference
American Educational Research Association
Computer Support for Collaborative Learning
ACL: The Association for Computational Linguistics Conference
Coling: International Committee on Computational Linguistics Conference
HLT: Human Language Technology Conference
EMNLP: Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
Student should be actively enrolled in the certificate program (must
be taking courses/making appropriate progress, not just enrolled), OR
should have already received the certificate. Student must have completed Issues and Methods in Cognitive Science.
Student should explore all other possible sources for funding which
might be available from the Graduate School, his/her home department,
and/or research grants BEFORE approaching the ICS awards committee.
Student may request funding for research costs already expended in
the last year.
Research must be interdisciplinary in nature.
Timeline/Schedule
Call for Applications
Deadline
Notification
Fall
Mid Sept.
3 weeks later
3 weeks after deadline
Spring
Mid Jan.
3 weeks later
3 weeks after deadline
Summer
Mid May
3 weeks later
3 weeks after deadline
The committee will meet as soon as possible after the deadline. Decisions
will be emailed to all ICS members announcing awards, as soon as is
possible after the meeting. The notification will include a web site
URL on how to get reimbursed by ICS.
If a student is not awarded money for any reason, an email will be
sent to that student only explaining why s/he did not receive an award
Email will be sent to ICS administration with names
and amounts awarded.
Awardees have up to one year from the award date to turn in receipts
(and meet any other requirements) to receive funding. (If applying for
retroactive funding for research materials, receipts should be turned
in within one month of the award.)
Funding Limits
Per student:
Award Type
Condition
Maximum Amount
Travel
Max per year
$700
Travel
Present at a conference
$500
Travel
Attending approved conference
(no presentation)
$200
Travel
Max lifetime
$3500
Research
Max per year
$500
Research
Max lifetime
$2500
There is no limit on number of times a student may apply for either
type of grant in a given year, though students should not apply if they
have already used up (actually received) their maximum in a year (if they
applied earlier, but then didn't use it for whatever reason, the student is encouraged to apply again).
How are awards decided?
The funding committee will strive to fund as many students as possible
within the guidelines and the amount budgeted. First and foremost, an
application must meet all the criteria listed on the appropriate pages
. If requests for funding exceed the amount budgeted,
however, the committee will rank applications based loosely on the following
preferences:
Travel
preference to students actually presenting a talk or poster over
those just attending a conference
if just attending a conference, preference to interdisciplinary conferences,
or a conference in a field other than the student's, over those in the
student's own field (providing there is still an interdisciplinary component
to that student's attendance)
preference to first time applicants in a given year over those who
have already been awarded money that year
preference to first time applicants over applicants who have received
money in past years
Research
preference to first time applicants over applicants who have received
money in past years
doctoral before masters before non-degree related
Obligations of awardees: There will be scheduled times in the spring at which all awardees
are expected to present work funded by these grants. These times will
be announced via email by the ICS directors. Awardees are expected to
be aware of their obligation to sign up for a time to present and watch
for these announcements.
Poster session for all who presented posters at conferences in the
last year, including for funds awarded in summer (and even spring) of
the previous year if the conference was after the previous ICS awardee
poster session.
One or more Friday afternoon ICS sessions will be reserved for those
who gave talks to give the talk or something more updated (e.g., 15
or 20 min apiece, just as at a conference)
Those who received research funds should also prepare a short talk
or poster (or use such given at other conferences not specifically funded
by this particular ICS award) that discusses the research done with
the funds.
Students are encouraged to make available to others any reusable research
materials, such as pictures, sound recordings, etc. ICS hopes to implement
an online forum for advertising such materials.
