NSF Student Travel Grant for 2018 ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM)

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

The 2018 SIGCOMM conference takes place from August 20 to August 24, 2018 in Budapest, Hungary. This award assists 20 US-based graduate students to attend this conference. Participation in conferences such as SIGCOMM forms a central part of the graduate school experience as it provides students with an opportunity to interact with senior researchers from academia and industry and exposes them to leading-edge research in the field. SIGCOMM, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) stands unique in its emphasis on interactions between networking researchers at an international level. Attending SIGCOMM presents an excellent opportunity for US graduate students to connect with a thriving international research community. In 2014-2015, SIGCOMM added additional programming to enrich the student experience. A mentorship program has run in the past four years assigning junior students with a more senior mentor at the conference. In 2015, the introduction of "preview sessions" gave students a chance to get briefed on topics prior to attending main session talks. The response to both of these has been extremely positive and the continuation this year of the mentorship program and topic preview sessions will help ensure students are engaged and get maximum benefit from attending the conference. Students supported by this award will be able to attend the main conference and associated workshops at SIGCOMM 2018. The travel grant co-chairs are committed to encouraging the participation of women and under-represented minorities. Broader Impact: This project integrates research and education of students through exposure to a premier technical meeting in computer networks and communications. Students will have the opportunity to observe high-quality presentations and interact with senior researchers in the field both in the main conference and the associated workshops. The proposed student participation will have a positive impact on the quality of their research. Women and other minorities are highly encouraged to participate. The SIGCOMM conference has developed into a top-tier international conference, presenting a tremendous opportunity to students to expand their breadth of ideas, research skills, and technical perspectives. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.