NSF Student Travel Grant for 2022 Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) Women Meeting at Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC)

This award will support student attendance at the Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) Women Event which will be co-located with the 51st Annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC), June 20-24, 2022, in Rome, Italy. Scientists all over the world are increasingly acknowledging the need for diversity. Many diversity-related workshops are being organized with the goal of building community, increasing camaraderie, and helping minorities to share their experience and receive mentoring.

While these workshops and meetings of minority communities are extremely important, it is equally important to co-locate these meetings with major technical conferences whenever possible. This allows the broader research community to hear the issues raised by minorities. It also allows the minority participants to better take advantage of the technical conferences.

STOC is one of the flagship annual research conference in the field of Theoretical Computer Science (TCS). STOC features presentations covering all aspects of TCS and encourages papers that broaden the reach of computer science theory. Moreover, the co-located theory festival organizes invited sessions with the best theoretical papers presented outside the TCS community.

This award will provide partial support to approximately 10 students to attend this leading conference as well as the TCS Women event. The event will consist of a lunch, a panel of senior female researchers, and a workshop open to all, featuring research presentations by prominent female researchers. An important goal will be to provide opportunities for network-building among women and minority researchers in TCS.

It will contribute towards attracting more under-represented groups to TCS research, and will provide a positive environment for their future professional development.

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.