Travel: Undergraduate Travel Awards for the Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting

This award will support 26 U.S.-based students' travel to the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) annual meeting (10 students in 2025 and 16 in 2026), which will be held in St. Petersburg, Florida. The VSS conference is a premier venue for scientists who are interested in the functional aspects of vision. The VSS annual meeting brings together in one forum scientists from the broad range of disciplines that contribute to vision science, including visual psychophysics, neuroscience, computational vision and cognitive psychology. The scientific content of the meetings reflects the breadth of topics in modern vision science, from visual coding to perception, recognition and the visual control of action, as well as the recent development of new methodologies from cognitive psychology, computer vision and neuroimaging. Student attendees will be able to present their ideas and projects to other attendees, which can help them develop their communication and presentation skills, receive valuable feedback on their research from experts in the field, and expand their professional networks with researchers and industry professionals to get their insights on the latest theories, technologies and challenges. Student attendance also enriches the conference itself, bringing new ideas and experiences into the community. This travel award will provide career development and learning opportunities in VSS-related fields for U.S.-based students who would otherwise be less likely to be able to attend. Criteria for selection include a demonstrated interest in the field, as shown through research output, coursework, and/or project experience; need for financial support; and diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. The organizing team will widely advertise the availability of funding to increase the chance of reaching potential attendees from groups historically underrepresented in these sciences, with the twin goals of increasing the breadth of thoughts and perspectives available to conference attendees and developing the next generation of researchers and practitioners. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.