Travel: NSF Student Travel Grant for the 2026 ACM Collective Intelligence 2026 (CI 2026) and the 2026 ACM Conference on Human-AI Complementarity and Alignment (HCOMP 2026)

This project provides travel support for promising graduate and undergraduate students to attend the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Collective Intelligence Conference (CI 2026), co-located with the ACM Conference on Human-AI Complementarity and Alignment (HCOMP 2026) in Alexandria, Virginia. These cross-disciplinary fields combine human-centered computer science with artificial intelligence (AI) to address fundamental questions regarding how human teams and AI systems can safely cooperate to solve complex societal problems. Lowering financial barriers ensures that talented students can engage directly with leading academic and industrial experts. By fostering a highly trained next-generation scientific workforce in critical AI and computing fields, this project directly advances the national prosperity, technological leadership, and scientific progress of the United States. The primary goal of this grant is to fund a cohort of 10 student participants from US-based institutions to fully participate in the technical programs of both CI 2026 and HCOMP 2026. The grant logistics prioritize student professional development through structured mentoring, networking blocks, and formal research presentations. Supported PhD students will participate in an intensive Doctoral Consortium to receive expert dissertation critique from senior researchers. Evaluation metrics will prioritize first-time attendees and students lacking alternative funding, and selection data will be preserved to optimize student experiences at subsequent conference iterations. 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.