Travel Grants

VLDB 2015 Travel Fellowship and Prof. Ram Kumar Memorial Fellowship Program

The VLDB Travel Fellowship Program provides financial support to students and faculty affiliated with universities with limited funding opportunities (e.g., universities in developing countries) to attend the VLDB 2015 conference to be held at Kohala Coast, Hawai’i, Aug 31 to Sep 4, 2015 (http://www.vldb.org/2015/). The long-term goal of the program is to encourage talented young scientists to pursue a career in database research.

This year, there are additional fellowships generously donated by the Prof. Ram Kumar Memorial Foundation, which will support 20 students to the tune of US$250 each, to cover expenses that they would otherwise incur out of their own funds. We also expect to have some free registrations provided by VLDB conference sponsors.

What does the travel fellowship provide?

The VLDB travel fellowship helps defray the cost of conference attendance by providing free registration and an additional amount of (maximum) US$1,500 toward other costs such as travel and lodging. Fellowship recipients are responsible for their own travel arrangements, including health insurance, if necessary.

In addition, the Prof. Ram Kumar Memorial Foundation will support 20 students to the tune of US$250 each, to cover expenses that they would otherwise incur out of their own funds.

Eligibility and Selection Criteria

Applicants must be:

  • full-time students in good standing (graduate or undergraduate) or faculty members,
  • affiliated with universities with limited funding opportunities and that do not already have considerable presence at VLDB conferences.

Preference will be given to applicants who are primary authors of a paper accepted at the main conference or the workshops in VLDB 2015, or otherwise demonstrate keen interest in database research, and are from regions that are under-represented in the database community.

Application Deadlines

Applicants should fill out the form at the following URL:

http://goo.gl/forms/6OEKUBsv7V

Applicants should fill out the above form online, and must also have a nominator (faculty advisor for student applicants, or senior faculty member or department head for faculty applicants), who will provide a recommendation letter. The same application will be used for both the VLDB travel fellowships and the Prof. Ram Kumar Foundation travel grants.

(Note: For the benefit of applicants from countries like China, that unfortunately block google and other sites, an application form formatted as an Excel sheet can be found here; the filled in spreadsheet can be emailed to vldbtravelgrant@gmail.com)

Both the form and letter must be submitted on or before June 22, 2015.

Nominators should provide the following information about himself/herself and the nominee as a simple text file attachment to vldbtravelgrant@gmail.com, on or before June 22, 2015, with the subject line of the email being

“VLDB 2015 Travel Fellowship Nomination for (name-of-applicant-here)”

The email should contain, in order,

  • Nominator’s Name.
  • Nominator’s University/College and Position.
  • Name of applicant
  • A justification (in 100 words or less) for why the applicant deserves to receive this fellowship.
  • A short note about availability/non-availability of other funding sources.

Selected candidates will be informed by 1 July 2015. People applying for the VLDB fellowships are advised to not register before hearing from us (or July 4, if for some reason you don’t hear from us by then), since the fellowship includes free registration; note that the early registration deadline is 8 July 2015.