NSF Student Travel Grant for 2019 Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference (GLBIO)

University Of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN

Investigators

Abstract

The Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference (GLBIO) strives to enhance educational opportunities and research infrastructure throughout the North American Great Lakes region, to make the region a world leader in bioinformatics and computational biology. In 2019, GLBIO will be held at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, during May 19-22. An important goal of the 14th edition of this annual conference is to foster long-term, collaborative relationships among computational and life science researchers and educators from academia, government, and industry. GLBIO provides an interdisciplinary forum for sharing scientific information, including discussing methods, research findings, and educational experiences regarding computational investigations of biological problems. The annual meeting includes invited keynote presentations, oral presentations selected from peer-reviewed full paper or abstract submissions, tutorials, workshops, special sessions, and poster presentations. This travel award supports student participation from US universities at GLBIO 2019. Students will be educated on cutting-edge scientific developments that will drive future discoveries in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology. Also, they will have opportunities to present their work as oral talks or posters, or to participate in recruiting events with universities or industry partners. By helping further students' careers and train interdisciplinary scientists, this NSF student travel grant will benefit global scientific competitiveness of the US. Historically, more than half of the GLBIO attendees have been students, over 90% of whom have been US-based. Through this NSF student travel grant, GLBIO 2019 will create a valuable training opportunity for 20 student attendees, by providing them with a partial funding support to attend the conference (as a combination of conference registration, lodging, and transportation costs). Special focus will be on first-time conference attendees who will not necessarily be presenting their work at the conference, and of the students who will be presenting their work, on female, undergraduate or high school, underrepresented minority, or disabled students. Applications for student travel grants will be solicited as follows. All students presenting their work at the conference will be sent emails making them aware of the student travel grant opportunity. The grant opportunity will be advertised on the GLBIO 2019 web site, via conference announcements, and outreach to under-represented student groups and organizations. 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.