Travel Award Program

Updated 04/11/2012

Overview

Travel Icon The Materials Computation Center (MCC) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign administers an NSF-sponsored program offers travel funds to US-based scientists to attend workshops, symposium and tutorials.

Who is eligible for support?

Support is available to junior faculty, postdocs, students or research scientists at US universities; tenured faculty are eligible, but are much less likely to receive support. Only researchers attending or employed by US universities a re eligible. (Staff employed at national labs are ineligible unless they also have an appointment at a university.) We will consider individuals from research areas overlapping with those of MCC: condensed matter physics, chemistry, materials science and computer science.

What does the support cover?

Funding will support travel to and from workshops before September 30, 2014 and cover local expenses during the workshop. In some cases, only partial funding will be available. We will add eligible workshops over the next days, and encourage early-career scientists to apply.

When do I apply?

In general, the Travel Support application is due the same date that the workshop application is due. (You must submit two applications; one for the workshop itself, and one for travel support.) For the workshops which have not posted application due dates, the Travel Officer has assigned a due date for the travel support applications 60 days before the event starting date, and marked the due date with an asterisk (*) in the list below. For example, if a workshop starts on June 1st, and there's no workshop application due date, the travel support application is due April 1st. If you have questions, please contact the Travel Officer.

Online application

Online travel support application.

Upcoming workshops

The CECAM workshop page lists other details about the events. The Travel Support application lists the workshops, in chronological order.

Dates Workshop Travel Support Application Due
4/16-18/2012GW quasiparticle calculations in condensed matter physics and nanoscience
Lausanne, Switzerland
February 16, 2012
4/23-25/2012Chemical and topological functionalization of graphitic surfaces: open challenges for computational modeling
Lausanne, Switzerland
February 23, 2012
4/26-28/2012Emergent Dynamics in Driven Colloids
Lausanne, Switzerland
February 26, 2012
5/5-10/2012Computational Oxide Spintronics
Cheshire, United Kingdom
March 6, 2012
5/7-9/2012Car-Parrinello Molecular Dynamics (CPMD) tutorial: understanding condensed matter and molecular physics
Lausanne, Switzerland
March 8, 2012
5/7-10/2012New Challenges in Electrostatics of Soft and Disordered Matter
Toulouse, France
March 8, 2012
5/10-12/2012Nonadiabatic quantum dynamics with MCTDH and CPMD
Lausanne, Switzerland
March 11, 2012
5/14-16/2012Reduced Basis, POD and Reduced Order Methods for model and computational reduction: towards real-time computing and visualization?
Lausanne, Switzerland
March 15, 2012
5/21-25/20129th ETSF Young Researcher Meeting 2012 : Revolutions in ab initio, closing the circle between theory and experiment
Brussels, Belgium
March 22, 2012
5/21-23/2012Anchoring simulations to experiments: challenges for understanding and treating Alzheimer's disease
Paris, France
March 22, 2012
5/21-23/2012INTEGRATED SOFTWARE FOR INTEGRATIVE STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY
Didcot, UK
March 22, 2012
5/22-25/2012Quantum transport in molecular nanostructures
Dublin, Ireland
March 23, 2012
5/29-31/2012Ribosome-associated protein folding: Translation, auxiliary factors, and translocation
Lausanne, Switzerland
March 30, 2012
6/4/2012EMTCCM School on Molecular Excited States
Zaragoza, Spain
April 5, 2012
6/4-8/2012Free energy calculations: From theory to applications
Champs-sur-Marne, France
April 5, 2012
6/4-8/2012Spring School on Path Integrals Molecular Dynamics Simulations
Toulouse, France
April 5, 2012
6/5-8/2012Advances in Biomolecular Modelling and Simulations using CHARMM
Dublin, Ireland
April 6, 2012
6/5-8/2012Theory of Quantum Gases and Quantum Coherence
ENS Lyon, France
April 6, 2012
6/6-9/20122nd TYC Workshop on Energy Materials: Charge Transfer for Energy Applications
London, United Kingdom
April 7, 2012
6/6-8/2012Control and enhancement of superconductivity in conventional and high Tc nanostructures
Lausanne, Switzerland
April 7, 2012
6/11-15/2012Computation of transition trajectories and rare events in non-equilibrium systems
ENS Lyon, France
April 12, 2012
6/11-13/2012DNA sequencing and detection with nanoprobes
Pisa, Italy
April 12, 2012
6/11-14/2012TCCM School on Theoretical Solid State Chemistry
Zaragoza, Spain
April 12, 2012
6/13-15/2012Enhancing Organocatalysis by Joining Advanced Theoretical and Experimental Approaches
Lugano, Switzerland
April 14, 2012
6/18-20/2012Mechanisms driving the organization of intra-cellular organelles
Zaragoza, Spain
April 19, 2012
6/18-21/2012What about U? Corrective approaches to DFT for strongly-correlated systems
Lausanne, Switzerland
April 19, 2012
6/19-29/2012Second Les Houches school in computational physics
Rhone-Alpes, France
April 20, 2012
6/27-29/2012Computational Physics Methods for Cancer
Lausanne, Switzerland
April 28, 2012
6/28-29/2012Theoretical and Experimental Magnetism Meeting
Abingdon, UK
April 29, 2012
7/2-5/2012Efficient localised orbitals for large systems, strong correlations and excitations
Cambridge, United Kingdom
May 3, 2012
7/2-6/2012Understanding Common Aspects of Extreme Events in Fluids
Dublin, Ireland
May 3, 2012
7/4-6/2012THEORETICAL CHALLENGES IN ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE OF CLUSTERS AND NANOPARTICLES
Lausanne, Switzerland
May 5, 2012
7/9-28/2012Summer School on Atomistic Simulation Techniques for Material Science, Nanotechnology and Biophysics
Trieste, Italy
May 10, 2012
7/9-12/2012Towards in silico biological cell: Bridging experiments and simulations
Lausanne, Switzerland
May 10, 2012
7/16-20/2012Ab initio Valence Bond theory
Paris, France
May 17, 2012
7/16-18/2012Structure-Property Relationships in Hierarchical Biocomposites
Lausanne, Switzerland
May 17, 2012
7/22-31/2012CCP5 Summer School in Molecular Simulation 2012
Cardiff, United Kingdom
May 23, 2012
7/23-28/20122012 Summer School on Computational Materials Science: Quantum Monte Carlo Theory and Applications
Urbana
May 24, 2012
8/1 - 10/8/2012International Guest Student Programme on Scientific Computing
Jülich, Germany
June 2, 2012
8/2-8/2012HoW exciting! Hands-on Workshop on Excitations in Solids 2012
Berlin, Germany
June 3, 2012
8/12-17/2012The 2012 CAMD Summer School on Electronic Structure Theory and Materials Design
Lyngby, Denmark
June 13, 2012
8/13-17/2012Topological Materials
Bremen, Germany
June 14, 2012
8/27-29/2012Novel Phenomena in Multi-Condensate Superconductors, Superfluids, and Ultracold Gases
Lausanne, Switzerland
June 28, 2012
8/28-31/2012Density Functional Theory and Beyond with Numeric Atom-Centered Orbitals
Berlin, Germany
June 29, 2012
8/30 - 9/1/2012Theoretical and Computational Astrochemistry
Pisa, Italy
July 1, 2012
9/3-8/2012Design of self-assembling materials
Vienna, Austria
July 5, 2012
9/3-7/2012Graphene: from band structure to many-body physics
Bremen, Germany
July 5, 2012
9/3/2012Protein Folding: Integrating theory, simulation and experiment
Zuerich, Switzerland
July 5, 2012
9/5-7/2012Orbital-free approach for high energy density physics
Paris, France
July 7, 2012
9/5-7/2012Validation and Verification in Electronic-Structure calculations: state of the art and perspectives
Lausanne, Switzerland
July 7, 2012
9/10/2012CECAM Conference - Energy from the Sun: Computational Chemists and Physicists Take up the Challenge
Chia Laguna, Italy
July 12, 2012
9/10-12/2012Machine learning in atomistic simulations
Lugano, Switzerland
July 12, 2012
9/12-14/2012Modelling realistic inorganic nanostructures; bridging the gap between theory and experiment
Zaragoza, Spain
July 14, 2012
9/16-18/2012Polymer Translocation through Nanopores
Mainz, Germany
July 18, 2012
9/17/2012EMRS Fall Meeting Symposium J: Computer modelling in nanoscience and nanotechnology: an atomic-scale perspective
Warsaw, Poland
July 19, 2012
9/17-21/2012Physics, Computation, and the Mind: Advances and Challenges at Interfaces
La Herradura, Spain
July 19, 2012
9/18-21/2012Spin states in biochemistry and inorganic chemistry
Zaragoza, Spain
July 20, 2012
9/19-21/2012Statistical Mechanics: Interplay of Theory and Computer Simulations
Mainz, Germany
July 21, 2012
9/23-26/2012Vibrational Optical Activity: Interplay of Theory and Experiment
Pisa, Italy
July 25, 2012
9/24-26/2012Exploring Protein Interactions through Theory and Experiments
Lausanne, Switzerland
July 26, 2012
10/2-5/201217th ETSF Workshop on Electronic Excitations: Advanced Green's function methods
Coimbra, Portugal
August 3, 2012
10/2-4/2012Functional Molecules on Surfaces: New Building Blocks for Nano-spintronics
Bonn, Germany
August 3, 2012
10/3-5/2012High Performance Computing in Computational Chemistry and Molecular Biology: Challenges and Solutions provided by ScalaLife project
Lausanne, Switzerland
August 4, 2012
10/8-12/2012Future challenges in CO2 reduction
Bremen, Germany
August 9, 2012
10/8/2012Signaling pathways: Interplay between microscopic changes and global behavior of biological systems
Cachan, France
August 9, 2012
10/8-12/2012Simulating Soft Matter with ESPResSo, ESPResSo++ and VOTCA
Stuttgart, Germany
August 9, 2012
10/8-12/2012Tutorial for the AMBER set of modelling tools.
Lausanne, Switzerland
August 9, 2012
10/15-17/2012Structure, functionalization and dynamics of fluid interfaces
Zaragoza, Spain
August 16, 2012
10/15-19/2012Towards First-Principles Description of van der Waals Interactions in Complex Materials
Lausanne, Switzerland
August 16, 2012
10/22-26/2012Crystal structure prediction using the USPEX code
Lausanne, Switzerland
August 23, 2012
10/22-26/2012Response treatment for the dynamical properties of materials with the ABINIT package
Zurich, Switzerland
August 23, 2012
10/24-26/2012Surface dynamics: Beyond Born-Oppenheimer surface static approximation
Zaragoza, Spain
August 25, 2012
11/6-9/2012Vibrational coupling: most important, often ignored, and a challenge for ab-initio theory
Lausanne, Switzerland
September 7, 2012
11/14/2012Functional Dynamics of Biomolecules
Lausanne, Switzerland
September 15, 2012
11/26-30/2012Fluid-Structure Interactions in Soft-Matter Systems: From the Mesoscale to the Macroscale
Prato, Italy
September 27, 2012
12/5-7/2012New insights on metals under extreme conditions
Paris, France
October 6, 2012
1/14-18/2013Simluating Activated Processes in Physics and Chemistry: Theoretical Foundations
Les Diablerets, Switzerland
November 15, 2012
2/4-8/2013Conformational Dynamics: from Enzymes to Molecular Machines
Lausanne, Switzerland
December 6, 2012
3/1-3/2013Self-assembly: from fundamental principles to design rules for experiment
Lausanne, Switzerland
December 31, 2012
3/11-15/2013Molecular electronics: Quo vadis?
Bremen, Germany
January 10, 2013
3/11-13/2013Spatiotemporal mechanisms and single-molecule effects in cellular biophysics
Berlin, Germany
January 10, 2013
9/8-13/2013CECAM/Psi-k Research Conference on Multi-scale Modeling from First-Principles
Cap Roig de Platja d'Aro, Spain
July 10, 2013

Obtaining travel support

To get support you must:

  1. Visit the workshop's website and complete a workshop application.
  2. Complete the online Travel Support application. Late travel support applications will be accepted, but are given lower funding priority. Applicants should apply to the travel program simultaneously with applying to the workshop.

The MCC travel officer will inform you of any award thirty days after the travel support application due date.

It is the responsibility of the traveler to obtain any required visas from the appropriate embassy or nearest consulate of the country. Be sure to allow sufficient time for processing any visa applications.

Reimbursement after travel

The traveler will be reimbursed only after

  1. all travel-related receipts
  2. a Travel Reimbursement Form
  3. and a scientific report have been received by the MCC travel officer, and possibly:
  4. visa-related documents, if you are staying in the U.S. under a visa. Different visa types require different documentation.

Notes:

  • Travel guidelines of the National Science Foundation apply to this travel reimbursement, along with other guidelines given in the Travel Award Instructions (PDF).
  • You will send the reimbursement paperwork to different addresses (at either University of Illinois depending on which event you attend. If your application is accepted, your acceptance letter will give the mailing address for your reimbursement.
  • If you send the paperwork to the wrong place, you could delay your reimbursement by several weeks.
  • The University of Illinois charges tax on reimbursements which are processed more than 60 days after the expenses were incurred. So, be timely.
  • Please email the MCC travel officer if you have questions.

Other travel support opportunities

Travel support for specific workshops will be listed here, as we hear about them. You can also check the American Physical Society webpage on International Travel Grants. The Grant is up to $2000 for travel and lodging expenses for international travel while visiting a collaborator.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Updated 04/10/2012

Q: Do you consider late applications?

A: Yes, but your chances of receiving support are better if you apply at least 60 days before the starting date of the workshop you plan to attend.

Q: I'm not flying directly to and from the workshop location from my home institution. For example, immediately after the workshop, I'm flying to a third city, to attend another workshop before returning home. How does this influence reimbursement?

A: Please email two flight itineraries, along with the ticket prices for those itineraries. Please do not send only a general description of your travel plans or ideas -- submit the exact dates, flights, and costs. The first should be your actual itinerary with documentation showing you have paid for this ticket; the second itinerary should show the flight costs for a trip directly to and from the workshop location, without any additional stops or additiona l days. The itineraries should indicate that they were generated on the same date. The funds can be used to pay for the lesser of the two ticket prices (plus any lodging during the workshop stay, and taxi/train ex penses to attend the workshop).

Q: What should be the contents of the letter of reference from my adviser/supervisor?

A: We usually recommend to the advisers that:

  1. The letter should indicate:
    1. Your approval for the applicant's participation in the trip
    2. How you think the applicant's attendance at this workshop will benefit their professional development and research
    3. How suitable the topic is for applicant's interests and current level of experience
    4. Any support which your university can provide to fund this trip
  2. A lengthy letter is not necessary, it can be 2-4 short paragraphs.
  3. Please send the letter to mcc-travel@illinois.edu.
  4. The letter can be a plain-text email message, or a PDF file attached to an email message.

Q: I've submitted my application several months in advance of the application deadline -- is it possible to get an early decision?

A: No, very likely not, for two reasons. One, we evaluate the applications after the workshop organizers have accepted applicants to the workshop itself. Two, typically the Travel Officer reviews all the applicat ions at one time, after the Travel Support de adline for that event has passed. In case there are more applicants than we can fund, this is fair to all the applicants. The deadline is usually 90 days before the workshop/event date, to give the Travel Commi ttee time to review the applications and inf orm the applicants, with more than 60 days before the event starting date, so that awardees can make any travel arrangements.

Q: The documentation says that all non-US citizens need to submit a copy of their visa and I-94. Where and how should I submit those items?

A: You should submit those documents with your completed Travel Reimbursement Form, after you return. The address is listed on the form. Also, even if the back of the fo rm is blank, please copy it and send it with your other paperwork.

Q: Can you give me a letter saying that I've been accepted to the workshop?

A: No, such a letter has to come from the conference organizers. We can write a letter that you have a travel grant to go to the workshop.

Q: Can these funds cover my visa costs?

A: No, the funding can only be used to support travel to and from the workshop and cover local expenses during the workshop. The funds cannot be used to cover anything else, for example, the funds cannot be used to cover costs incurred when obtaining a vi sa.

Q: I want to go to a workshop which isn't listed here. Will you consider adding it?

A: This year (2010-2011) MCC supports travel to CECAM and Psi-K workshops. If the workshop is sponsored by CECAM or Psi-K, the omission may be an oversight and then the chances of our supporting it are quite high, and you should email the travel officer information about the meeting.

Q: I already bought my ticket for air travel on a non-US-operated airline. Will you make an exception?

A: No. If that part of the trip can be accomplished with a US-operated airline, we cannot reimburse for travel on non-US airlines.

Previous Workshops include:

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