Travel Grants & Scholarships for Conference Attendees

As much as we would like to fund every attendee's travel ourselves, SAI Conferences does not currently operate its own travel grant program - so it simply isn't possible for us to cover every author's or delegate's costs directly. Instead, this page lists a curated shortlist of well-known external organizations that award travel grants, conference scholarships and research travel awards to students, early-career researchers and academics who need help funding attendance at an academic conference.

Before applying elsewhere, it's worth first checking with your own educational institution - many universities have internal conference travel grant or scholarship funds that are easy to miss. Your department, graduate school, or local Chamber of Commerce may also know of a funding scheme we aren't aware of. When you do apply to any of the funders below, read the eligibility criteria carefully: some travel grants are restricted to a specific country or region, others require you to be at a particular stage of your studies (undergraduate, graduate, or postdoctoral), and some are tied to a specific field of research.

List of Travel Grants and Scholarships

Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) Travel Grants (International)

BIF awards travel grants to junior researchers currently conducting an experimental project in basic biomedical research who wish to pursue a short-term research stay or attend a practical course of up to three months. MD/PhD students and postdoctoral researchers worldwide can apply online.

Google Conference and Travel Scholarships

Covers conference registration, airfare, accommodation and a travel stipend for full-time students with a paper accepted into the main program (oral presentation preferred) of a top-tier computer science research conference. Applicants must be the paper's primary author; applications are reviewed on a rolling basis rather than a fixed deadline.

Carlsberg Foundation Grants

The Carlsberg Foundation supports excellent basic research at the highest international level in natural science, social science and the humanities, carried out by Danish researchers and by foreign researchers with an established connection to a Danish research environment. Several open calls run each year, including dedicated funding for conference travel and research stays.

EURAXESS Funding Database

A searchable, Europe-wide database of research funding and mobility opportunities - PhD positions, postdoc grants and travel/mobility awards - filterable by country, field and funding type. Free to use, with new listings added continuously.

USENIX Conference Grant Programs

Full-time computer science students can apply for complimentary registration plus assistance with travel and accommodation costs at USENIX conferences and workshops (systems, networking and security research). USENIX also runs dedicated Diversity Grants, including one specifically for Black computer science students. Funding is limited and rarely covers the full cost of travel.

ACM SIGHPC - Ewing "Rusty" Lusk Travel Scholarship

Covers full conference registration plus up to $1,600 in travel reimbursement for enrolled graduate students who are ACM SIGHPC members and lack institutional funding, to attend the PASC, PEARC or SC (Supercomputing) conferences - a strong match for high-performance-computing researchers.

Citadel Conference Travel Grant

A corporate-funded grant for STEM students covering conference registration, round-trip airfare, accommodation, airport transportation and a food stipend, for attendance at a defined list of major research conferences (including NeurIPS, ICML and the Grace Hopper Celebration). Deadlines are set per conference, so check the current list on Citadel's own page.

ACM-W Scholarships for Attendance at Research Conferences

Scholarships of up to $600 for intra-continental travel, or up to $1,200 for intercontinental travel, for undergraduate and graduate students in computer science and related fields attending a research conference. It's a one-time award - students who've received it before aren't eligible to apply again.

AnitaB.org Pass It On Awards Program

Cash awards (recent cycles have granted $1,000 each to multiple winners, plus complimentary registration to the Grace Hopper Celebration) that help fund women in computing, or projects that inspire and support girls and women entering computing, in the spirit of creating a network of women technologists helping one another. Open to women aged 18+ in any country.

Many individual IEEE-sponsored conferences (for example INFOCOM, CNS and the various IEEE Computer Society symposia) also run their own one-off student travel grants for authors of accepted papers. These aren't listed individually here since they're tied to a specific conference and year - search "[conference name] student travel grant" for the current one, or check that conference's own website directly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does SAI Conferences offer its own travel grants?

Not directly - we aren't able to fund every attendee's travel ourselves. The organizations listed above run their own independently-funded travel grant and scholarship programs, with their own eligibility criteria and application processes.

Who is eligible for a conference travel grant?

It depends entirely on the funder. Some travel grants are open only to students or early-career researchers, others require a connection to a specific country or institution, and some are restricted to a particular field of research. Always check the funder's own eligibility criteria before applying.

Where else can I look for conference funding?

Start with your own university, graduate school or department - many have internal funds for conference attendance that are easy to overlook. Professional societies in your field, and your local Chamber of Commerce, are also worth checking.

This list is provided for informational purposes as a courtesy to prospective attendees. SAI Conferences is not affiliated with, and cannot guarantee the availability or outcome of, any external grant or scholarship listed here. If you have questions about registering for or presenting at an SAI conference once funding is secured, see our Call for Papers page or get in touch.