Travel: NSF Student Travel Support for the 2026 ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining

This project provides travel support for students from U.S. universities to attend the 2026 ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM) in Boise, Idaho. WSDM is widely regarded as one of the leading venues for research in search, data mining, recommendation systems, and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven information systems. The conference attracts a global community of scholars and industry experts and showcases rigorously reviewed, high-quality technical contributions. The tentative five-day schedule for WSDM 2026 includes tutorials, Industry Day, WSDM Day, workshops, the WSDM Cup, and the PhD Symposium on Sunday and Thursday, with the main conference taking place Monday through Wednesday. All accepted papers will be published in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library, ensuring broad dissemination of the research presented. The WSDM program features an extensive set of activities, including keynote talks by leading researchers, technical paper sessions, an industry-focused day with invited speakers, tutorials, workshops, and a Doctoral Consortium aimed at early-stage scholars. The proposed travel awards, open to all applicants, will help nurture the next generation of researchers and professionals by giving students the opportunity to engage with foundational and cutting-edge work in web search, data mining, and AI-driven information systems. By supporting student participation and enabling interactions with senior researchers from academia and industry worldwide, this initiative will yield substantial intellectual benefits for both the attendees and the broader research community. 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.