Support for Student Participation in the International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces '03; November 5-7, 2003; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Oregon Health & Science University, Portland OR

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to support attendance by approximately 8 student authors or co-authors of research papers accepted for presentation at the First International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI-PUI'03), to held November 5-7 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The 3-day conference will bring together researchers from North America, Europe and Asia to present and discuss the latest multi-disciplinary work on multimodal interfaces, systems, and applications. The conference represents the growing interest in next-generation perceptive, adaptive and multimodal user interfaces. These new interfaces are especially well suited for interpreting natural communication and activity patterns in real-world environments; their emergence represents a radical departure from previous computing, and is rapidly transforming the nature of human-computer interaction by creating more natural, expressively powerful, flexible and robust means of interacting with computers. The conference organizers have put together a strong program of 46 technical papers, 3 keynote talks by well-known speakers, and a variety of demos and other events. Of the technical papers, over 30 are to be presented by or were co-authored by students, but unfortunately in some cases their academic advisors and university departments lack sufficient funds to pay their way. There are also a number of hardship cases, where qualified students would like to attend the meeting for general training in this new research area, but cannot afford to do so. The students to be supported by NSF funds have all agreed to serve as student volunteers; in return for contributing about 10 hours of their time to help run the conference, they will each receive paid registration, shared hotel accommodations, and need-based travel support to attend the conference. Broader Impacts: The conference's student volunteer program is structured so as to give students exposure to their new research community by presenting their own work, and by observing and interacting with other professionals in the field. It will encourage students at this critical time in their careers to begin building a social support network of peers and mentors. During student recruitment, women, minority students, people with disabilities and veterans all were encouraged to apply.