NSF Student Travel Grant for the 10th ACM International Conference on Underwater Networks and System (WUWNet'15)

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

The need to understand the changes in our planet's environment resulting from its inter-relations with human civilization and other natural eco-systems, has never been stronger. These are complex, global-scale issues and the challenges are many fold, beginning with fundamental scientific questions underpinning environmental processes across multiple scales (in space, time as well as biological diversity). Predictive climate change and its intersection with environmental monitoring is the grand challenge of today and constitutes an imminent problem confronting the future of our planet. Within this context, exploration and monitoring of the ocean (90% of which is still unexplored) is a key component. While there is a need for highly precise, real-time, fine-grained spatial-temporal sampling of the ocean environment, current methods such as remote telemetry and sequential local sensing cannot satisfy current requirements. The notion of an underwater network is relatively new due to the lack of maturity of underwater acoustic communications. Thus, the long-term goal of this conference on underwater networks (WUWNet) is to explore, investigate, monitor, observe, and master the ocean by underwater networking techniques. This award's main goal is to encourage and support graduate student participation in the Tenth ACM International Conference on Underwater Networks and System (WUWNet'15) to be held in Washington DC, on October 22-24, 2015. WUWNet has well established itself as the premier technical venue in the field. In the past nine years, the attendees to WUWNet have been doubled and so does the number of sessions. The Tenth ACM WUWNet promises to follow on the successful footsteps of its predecessors and further brings this conference to a new level close to a small conference. The conference organizing committee constituency reflects well the wide scope of the conference, and puts together a very strong technical program, including technical sessions, panels, keynote speeches as well as poster and demo sessions (see http://wuwnet.acm.org/2015/). Participation in these types of technical events is an extremely important part of the graduate school experience, providing students with the opportunity to interact with more senior researchers and peer graduate students, to be exposed to leading edge work in the field, and take part in discussions that are likely to shape the future of the field (e.g., in terms of technology, standards, etc). The award will be used to provide travel support for students who might otherwise be unable to attend the conference.