Extended to the ’20-’21 academic year!

We thank Cambridge University Press for its donation of copies of their book ‘Cracking the Digital Ceiling’.  Each scholarship awardee of the 2019-2020 and of the 2020-2021 academic years will receive a copy of the book.

ACM-W Scholarships for Attendance at Research Computer Science Conferences

ACM-W provides support for women undergraduate and graduate students in Computer Science and related programs to attend research Computer Science conferences. Students who are not from a traditional CS/CE/SE department but working on Computer Science-related projects are also encouraged to apply.

This exposure to the CS research world can encourage a student to continue on to the next level (Undergraduate to Graduate, Masters to Ph.D., Ph.D. to an industry or academic position). The student does not have to present a paper at the conference she attends.

The ACM-W scholarships are divided between scholarships of up to $600 for intra-continental conference travel, and scholarships of up to $1200 for intercontinental conference travel. Scholarship applications are evaluated in 6 groups each year, in order to distribute awards across a range of conferences.

ACM-W encourages the student’s home department to match the scholarship award and recognize the student’s achievement locally within their department. In addition, if the award is for attendance at one of several ACM special interest group conferences (SIGACCESS, SIGACT, SIGARCH, SIGCOMM, SIGCHI, SIGCSE, SIGDA, SIGECOM, SIGEVO, SIGGRAPH, SIGHPC, SIGIR, SIGITE, SIGMM, SIGMOBILE, SIGOPS, SIGPLAN, and SIGSOFT) the SIG may provide complementary conference registration and a mentor during the conference. The number of free registrations available varies from SIG to SIG.

We remark that we encourage also attendance to non-ACM-related research CS conferences.

Please note that this is a one-time award. Therefore, students who have already received this scholarship in the past are no longer eligible to apply.

Please note also that we do not provide scholarships to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing or the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing.

For scholarships to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing apply here.
For scholarships to attend the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing apply here.

For all other conferences in CS follow these instructions.

IMPORTANT! Scholarships during the COVID-19 pandemic

We decided to keep the deadlines as they are listed below, so as to make a smaller disruption. Therefore, in October we will assign scholarships for the conferences officially scheduled in December and January 2021. However, if the conference is postponed or cancelled, the scholar will retain their scholarship for the same conference, or for another later conference. In both cases, the scholar must inform the ACM-W scholarship committee. Moreover, in the latter case, the ACM-W committee will decide if the new conference is equally suitable. In any case, the scholarship will not be lost.

Application and notification dates are as follows:

To apply, you will need to submit the following:

1. your information,
2. details of the conference you want to attend,
3. a statement of why you want to attend the conference and what you hope to gain from doing so, and
4. a support letter from your advisor.

It is simple. Complete the online application form. In order for an application to be considered for award, it is necessary that all sections be completed. The support letter is essential to your application. Applications without recommendation letters submitted by the corresponding application deadline will not be reviewed. Each applicant must set up an ACM web account in order to complete the application — but the account is free to set up.

If you have any questions on the ACM-W Scholarship program that are not addressed through this page, please email ACM-W Scholarship Committee chair Professor Viviana Bono for any additional information.

The committee members are listed here.