GSA Travel Awards

The Graduate Student Association sponsors three travel awards (up to $500!) per quarter to assist students with costs associated with attending an academic conference.

Details:

All graduate students at the School of Medicine are eligible to apply
Each student can receive up to $500 during his/her tenure as a graduate student
Applications will be judged on the following criteria, ranked in this order:

1. Financial Need: Would the students otherwise be unable to attend due to the lack of funding from their lab? A letter from the mentor verifying this claim must accompany the application as laid out in the GSA Travel Award Application Form.
2. Academic Merit: Is the student presenting original work at this conference? Generally, being selected for an oral presentation carries more weight than being selected for a poster presentation.
3. Year of student and previous conferences attended: Students who are in their fifth or sixth years who have never been to a conference before will be given priority in this category compared to first or second year students who have attended conferences in their labs.

This means an “ideal” candidate is someone presenting original work in an oral presentation at a conference as a senior student who had never attended a conference before, and would not be able to attend the conference without financial aid from the GSA. This person would also be a senior student who had never attended a conference before.

A candidate who is unlikely to get funded is a candidate whose lab can absolutely afford to reimburse their students, who is not presenting any work at the conference or and would not benefit from attending the conference, and is a junior student who has been to many conferences before.

Deadlines:
September 15th
December 15th
March 1st
June 1st

New for 2020-2021 — Diversity Funds!

The purpose of the diversity fund is to help increase access to academic conferences for students from underrepresented groups. Students must meet ONE of the following criteria to be considered eligible.

The student is from an underrepresented background in science and have been unable to attend a conference during their graduate study, or conference attendance has been extremely limited. Preference will be given to students in their later years of graduate study and the student must be presenting their own original work at the event planned to be attended.
The work planned to be presented aims to address or alleviate a problem or condition that unequally affects minorities within the community, or is an issue faced by minorities that is underrepresented in the scientific literature.

If you are eligible, submit the diversity supplemental form along with the routine application. Form can be found at the end of the regular application.

Reimbursements

Need a reimbursement? Use the form below.