Policies regarding travel funding for gradiate students

The Department of Mathematics strongly encourages graduate students to actively participate in scientific conferences. For this purpose,  the Graduate  Committee welcomes requests from graduates  for financial support towards travel expenses, accommodations, and conference fees.

On the other hand, the department has very limited funds to support travel of faculty and Ph.D. students. All decisions to fund travel and the level of funding are made by the Department Chair and the  Planning and Budget Committee. At their request, the GC reviews travel requests of graduate students.  The GC will forward the worthy ones with a positive recommendation that the request be funded at some level provided Departmental funds are available.

Travel request should be on one page, possibly including supporting documents as appendices. Separate  travel funding request should be made for each trip. The request should be made to the  Graduate Committee chair. The students advisor  must   send a supporting letter.

When evaluating an application the Graduate Committee will favor those requests where:

• The student is close to completing their PhD and is giving a talk or, has recently finished their Comprehensives, and has not received prior Departmental travel funding.
• The student is searching matching support for the travel requested.

Other sources of funding include:

• The conference organizers (most conferences have funds for graduate students participants)
• FAS-PBC and Alumni Travel Fellowship  
• FAS-GSO (FAS graduate student organization) Travel Grant
• Pitt-GPSA (university professional and graduate student organization.
• your advisor

The request should follow this guideline:

1. Request: I request  $**** support to attend [insert Conference title and dates]. I will give a scientific talk on [title of your talk].
2. Rationale: This conference was chosen because [reasons]. Benefits of my attendance includes [benefits].
3. Budget: [Detailed budget ---travel expenses, accommodations, and conference fees etc].
4. Matching funding sought: I have requested matching funding of  $**** from [list sources -- have you tried all the sources listed above? If not why not?].
5. The department [has/has not] provided travel funding before. [If so, give details.] details to be inserted