IDEA Travel Support

IDEA: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Accessibility Travel Support RAS Conferences 2024

Announcement April 6: We thank all applicants for their patience. We have received a great amount of applications, and processing them and distributing the awards requires a great effort from our side. We have notified the awardees for ICRA, and we will proceed with announcing the rest of the awardees in the next few days. Those who were not selected will also receive an email along this process. It was a very difficult process and we received many great applications, but do not be discouraged! We expect your applications for the IDEA2025 -- details will be announced in the third quarter of 2024.

 

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Women in Engineering (WiE) committee launched a new initiative in 2023 to support people interested in the research field of robotics and automation. Our goal is to increase diversity in our community by facilitating access to underrepresented groups to attend one of the major IEEE RAS conferences.

 

This award will cover registration, travel costs and accommodation of up to $3300 to attend one conference of your preference (either fully-sponsored, or co-sponsored by RAS). In particular, we will provide travel support for attending one of the following conferences (need to specify preference in the application): ICRA, IROS, CASE, Humanoids, RoboSoft, HRI, BioRob, ROMAN. Exemptions will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

 

This IDEA travel support focuses on increasing diversity in our community, including but not limited to:

• Secondary/undergrad/graduate students interested in robotics or automation topics
• Underrepresented groups: women, underrepresented minorities, first-generation college students, LGBTQ+
• 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).

 

Please note that eligible for this support are people who are not actively publishing to IEEE RAS conferences or similar in the last three years! Our goal is to support people with enthusiasm about robotics and automation, who want to (re-)enter the field.

 

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 the conference, 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 and automation conferences and host speakers from the RAS community.

 

Important Dates

• Applications open: 22 December 2023, 11:59 PT.
• Deadline to submit applications: 22 25 January 2024, 11:59 PT.
• Notification of Acceptance: 28 February 11 March 2024.

Application Details

To apply for the IDEA travel support award, please follow the steps in the Application Form.
You will be asked to submit your CV and a cover letter (maximum 2000 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;
• Describe why you selected the respective conference(s);
• Describe how your participation in the IDEA travel support program is in line with the objective of increasing diversity in our community;
• 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 organized an event, etc.

After the application deadline (January 22 25, 2024), the applications will be peer-reviewed by RAS members, and the IDEA committee will make the final decision for the selection of applicants to attend any of the aforementioned RAS conference. Notification of awardees will be announced by March 31, 2024. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at ieee-ras-wie@ieee.org.