Conference: Student Travel Support for SIGMOD 2026

This project requests support for U.S.-based doctoral students to attend the SIGMOD 2026 (ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data) conference. The annual ACM SIGMOD Conference is a leading international forum for database researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and results, and to exchange techniques, tools, and experiences. This proposal would enable 15 US-based students to attend the conference. This travel support will strengthen the national artificial and information technology workforce pipeline by providing intensive, mentored professional development for doctoral researchers who will become the next generation of faculty, research and development scientists, and innovation leaders. The conference's focused training in problem framing, evaluation, and communication across disciplines increases participants' capacity to conduct high-impact interdisciplinary research. This travel support will also lower barriers for participation by students in STEM, based on merit, strengthening the AI research and learning community. 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. NSF Award ID: 2611950 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Shantanu Sharma | Institution: New Jersey Institute of Technology, NEWARK, NJ | Award Amount: $15,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2611950 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2611950.html