Travel: NSF Student Travel Grant for the 2026 ACM Conference on Post-Quantum and Quantum-Based Security (PQQS 2026)

The transition to security technologies that remain trustworthy in the presence of quantum computing represents one of the most significant challenges facing modern cybersecurity. This travel grant supports the participation of U.S. doctoral students in the inaugural ACM Conference on Post-Quantum and Quantum-Based Security (PQQS). The conference novelties are the creation of a dedicated forum that integrates post-quantum cryptography, quantum-based security, secure systems, networking, hardware security, privacy, and policy within a single interdisciplinary community, while providing structured mentoring and professional development for the next generation of researchers. This travel grant will enable selected U.S. Ph.D. students to participate fully in PQQS. Student participants will engage in technical presentations, keynote lectures, panel discussions, poster sessions, and mentoring activities spanning post-quantum cryptography, cryptographic agility, secure communications, quantum-safe systems, formal methods, and quantum-enabled security. The conference program emphasizes interdisciplinary interaction among researchers in cryptography, computer security, networking, distributed systems, hardware security, and quantum information science, fostering a broader understanding of the technical and operational challenges involved in deploying quantum-resilient security technologies. The conference organizers will document participation outcomes and mentoring activities to assess the effectiveness of the conference activities in supporting student development and community building. The resulting knowledge, professional networks, and research collaborations will contribute to strengthen the national cybersecurity workforce and accelerate the dissemination of advances in post-quantum and quantum-based security to academia, industry, and government. 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.