To encourage student participation in interdisciplinary study and research, the institute provides funds, administered by a student committee, for students through the student research fund as well as travel funds to attend and present at interdisciplinary conferences.

Students in any member department may apply for funds. Travel funds may be applied for whether the student is presenting at or simply attending an interdisciplinary conference. These guidelines detail the requirements for, limitations in, and process for student travel and research funding.

The funds are administered by a student Travel and Research Award Committee consisting of one representative from each member department. Each department selects its own method for choosing a student representative. This committee is responsible for announcing the award each semester and allocating available funds. Applications for the ICS Student Travel and Research Awards are available to ICS student members through any of the committee members, the ICS office, or the links below. ICS travel and research awards will be distributed three times per year: fall, spring, and summer semesters.

One hard copy and one electronic copy of all application materials should be submitted.  Turn in the hard copy of your application form by putting it in the red folder (marked "ICS Grant Applications") on the shelving unit outside the ICS office at Muenzinger D414.  Turn in the electronic copy of your application as an email attachment to icsstudentawards@colorado.edu.  In your email submission please put the following in the subject line:  [Your Name] ICS Grant Application.

If you have questions that have not been answered please email us at icsstudentawards@colorado.edu

Eligibility for Travel Award

The student should be actively enrolled in the certificate program (must be taking courses/making appropriate progress, not just enrolled), OR should have already received the certificate. The student must have completed Issues and Methods in Cognitive Science. The student should explore all other possible sources for funding that might be available from the Graduate School, his/her home department, and/or research grants BEFORE approaching the ICS awards committee. The student should apply for funds BEFORE conference. An exception can be made if the student found out about or decided to attend a conference after the previous funding deadline but before the next funding cycle, or if there are other extenuating timing issues. Such requests for an exception must be explained in the application. Conferences must either be interdisciplinary, or if in the student’s major discipline, the work being presented must be interdisciplinary. If the student is only attending and not presenting, the conference must either be interdisciplinary or not in the student’s major discipline (for example, a computer science student attending a linguistics conference). Travel required to complete an interdisciplinary research project will be considered for funding at the committee’s discretion.

Examples of conferences counted as interdisciplinary:

• Cognitive Science Society Conference
• Human-Computer interaction Conference
• Artificial Intelligence Conference
• American Educational Research Association
• Computer Support for Collaborative Learning
• ACL: The Association for Computational Linguistics Conference
• Coling: International Committee on Computational Linguistics Conference
• HLT: Human Language Technology Conference
• EMNLP: Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing

Download Travel Award Application

Eligibility for Research Award

The student should be actively enrolled in the certificate program (must be taking courses/making appropriate progress, not just enrolled), OR should have already received the certificate. The student must have completed Issues and Methods in Cognitive Science. The student should explore all other possible sources for funding which might be available from the Graduate School, his/her home department, and/or research grants BEFORE approaching the ICS awards committee. The student may request funding for research costs already expended in the last year. Research must be interdisciplinary in nature.

Download Research Award Application

Timeline/Schedule

• The committee will meet as soon as possible after the deadline. Decisions will be emailed to all ICS members announcing awards as soon as is possible after the meeting. Once you have been notified of receipt of an award contact the ICS office for details on how to proceed.
• If a student is not awarded money for any reason, an email will be sent to that student only explaining why s/he did not receive an award.
• Email will be sent to ICS administration with names and amounts awarded.
• Awardees have up to one year from the award date to turn in receipts (and meet any other requirements) to receive funding. (If applying for retroactive funding for research materials, receipts should be turned in within one month of the award.)

Funding Limits

Per student:

• There is no limit on the number of times a student may apply for either type of grant in a given year, though students should not apply if they have already used up (actually received) their maximum in a year (if they applied earlier, but then didn’t use it for whatever reason, the student is encouraged to apply again).

How are awards decided?

The funding committee will strive to fund as many students as possible within the guidelines and the amount budgeted. First and foremost, an application must meet all the criteria listed on the appropriate pages . If requests for funding exceed the amount budgeted, however, the committee will rank applications based loosely on the following preferences:

Travel

• preference to students actually presenting a talk or poster over those just attending a conference
• if just attending a conference, preference to interdisciplinary conferences, or a conference in a field other than the student’s, over those in the student’s own field (providing there is still an interdisciplinary component to that student's attendance)
• preference to first-time applicants in a given year over those who have already been awarded money that year
• preference to first-time applicants over applicants who have received money in past years

Research

• preference to first-time applicants over applicants who have received money in past years
• doctoral before master’s before non-degree related

Obligations of Awardees

There will be scheduled times in the spring at which all awardees are expected to present work funded by these grants. These times will be announced via email by the ICS directors. Awardees are expected to be aware of their obligation to sign up for a time to present and watch for these announcements.

• Poster session for all who presented posters at conferences in the last year, including for funds awarded in summer (and even spring) of the previous year if the conference was after the previous ICS awardee poster session.
• One or more Friday afternoon ICS sessions will be reserved for those who gave talks to give the talk or something more updated (e.g., 15 or 20 minutes apiece, just as at a conference)
• Those who received research funds should also prepare a short talk or poster (or use such given at other conferences not specifically funded by this particular ICS award) that discusses the research done with the funds.
• Students are encouraged to make available to others any reusable research materials, such as pictures, sound recordings, etc.  Contact the ICS office to find out what materials are currently available.

***Warning to those receiving financial aid of any kind:  These fund are handled by the university as scholarship funds, and have the potential to decrease other aid if you are receiving other aid.  Please consult with your financial aid officer to see how this will be handled in your situation.