Workshop: Student Scholarship Program for the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2001)

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to subsidize expenses of student participants in a special poster session the PIs are organizing as part of the 18th annual International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML'2001), which will be held June 28-July 1 in Williamstown, MA (the PIs are the Program Co-Chairs of the conference). This is the premier conference for machine learning research. The PIs' goals are to integrate students into their research sub-communities and to give them a forum to talk to the leading researchers in the field about their PhD research. To this end, a poster session will be organized on one of the first nights of the conference where each sponsored student will have a poster. To ensure sufficient traffic, the PIs will require each program committee member to sign up ahead of time on the Web to see at least 5 posters that evening, on the basis of the students' abstracts. The students will also get a one page abstract submission to the conference proceedings. The PIs feel this plan has benefits over the more traditional PhD workshops organized by other conferences, as detailed in the proposal. The PIs will choose among the applicants for the scholarships, on the basis of a submitted abstract and vita plus a letter of recommendation from the student's advisor. They expect to make 30-40 awards of approximately $500 apiece. The mentoring work will be distributed among the members of the program committee. The poster session will provide students with invaluable exposure to outside perspectives on their work at a critical time in their research. This is an inexpensive yet highly effective means of encouraging young and upcoming researchers in machine learning.