Travel: Student Support for the 48th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2025)

This project will support approximately 10 students based in the United States (US) to attend the 48th ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2025), scheduled to be in Padua, Italy, July 13-18, 2025. SIGIR represents the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval. The conference has long been a central platform for advancing research, development, and education in search technologies and other methods of information access. It serves as the leading global venue for showcasing, demonstrating, and sharing innovative research, systems, and techniques in the broad field of information retrieval. As a highly selective event, it features oral and poster presentations of peer-reviewed papers, panel discussions, and keynote speeches from distinguished experts across academia and industry. The conference covers a wide array of topics in information retrieval, including theoretical foundations, algorithms and applications, evaluation methods, and societal impacts. Ensuring a strong presence of students and researchers who are based in the US at SIGIR 2025 is vital for sustaining the nation's leadership in this critical field both now and in the future. The selection process for the student travel grant recipients is open to all students studying at US Institutions of Higher Education. The initiative aims to reduce financial barriers that may prevent U.S.-based students from attending the event. The award opportunity will be shared through multiple channels, including the SIGIR 2025 official website and social media platforms. 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.