IDEA Travel Support

IDEA: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Accessibility travel support: Call for Applications

IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Women in Engineering (WiE) committee launched a new initiative to support people interested in the research field of robotics and automation. Our goal is to increase diversity in our community by facilitating access of underrepresented groups to one of the major IEEE RAS conferences, namely, ICRA/IROS/CASE. This award will be granted to three people per conference per year. Each awardee will receive a maximum of $3,300 to cover the travel costs of the trip to the selected conference. 

The main goal of IDEA is to further support our community by providing the opportunity to attend one of the major flagship conferences of IEEE RAS (e.g., ICRA, CASE, or IROS). This new IDEA travel support will focus on supporting the following: 

• Secondary/undergrad/graduate students interested in robotics or automation topics
• Underrepresented groups
• People with disabilities
• People who have stepped down from the field for some time and want to return (e.g., due to a disease or parental leave).

Through a mentoring program, the selected applicants will be paired with one or two mentors from the RAS WiE Committee during the conference to help bring synergies with the RAS community.

In exchange, the selected applicants will have to assist and actively be involved in the organization team of one of the IEEE RAS WiE Lunch/Aperó Events at any of the mentioned conferences. Moreover, the selected applicants will act as yearly ambassadors of RAS WiE. Optionally, we encourage the awardees, after having attended one of the RAS conferences, to help the WiE committee co-organize an event (online or in person) at their local community/university to share their unique experiences at the robotics conferences and host speakers from the RAS community.

Our first call for applications refers to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, to be held in London from May 29 - June 2, 2023. 

Deadline to submit applications: 15 February 2023, EOD.

Decisions: 17 March 2023

To apply for the IDEA travel support, please follow the steps in the Application Form. 

You will be asked to submit your CV and a motivation letter (maximum 500 words), in a single PDF file. Please consider including the following information in the motivation letter:

• Describe how this travel support will influence your professional path;
• Describe a significant technical project you have worked on;
• Give one or two examples of outreach activities you have implemented. For example, indicate if you are a member of a society or a local community and your involvement/contributions to them, or perhaps you have participated within a team in a robotics competition, or you have organised an event, etc.

After the deadline (Feb 15, 2023), the applications will be peer-reviewed by RAS members, and the IDEA committee will make the final decision for the selection of three applicants to attend the ICRA 2023 conference in London, UK. Decisions are to be announced by March 17, 2023. 

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at ieee-ras-wie@ieee.org.