Travel: NSF Student Travel Grant for Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2024 (FC24)

The project seeks to enable and broaden participation in the field of financial cryptography by funding student attendance at the Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2024 conference. The conference was founded to study digital cash and other forms of electronic finance, as well as privacy and cryptography in general; over the years it has had major impacts in the knowledge of cryptography, blockchain, economics of security, and related topics.

The conference has also brought together security and cryptography researchers and practitioners, economists, bankers, implementers and policy-makers. This travel award will expand the vibrancy of financial cryptography research and allied fields by connecting promising young students to the research community that has formed around this conference.

The expansion of this knowledge through including new participants with new perspectives is a principal goal of this project.

The project encourages new entrants into the vital field of security and cryptography research. The dialog between these new entrants and the established research community will result in insight into current problems and fresh ideas for the future. Students will be chosen based on their financial need and their ability to benefit from the conference, with an eye toward institutional and demographic diversity.

Broadening the pool of participants will be benefit society both from the field's better responsiveness to real social needs and preferences, and through growing the talent pool of people with research training around cryptography and cybersecurity.

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.