IGS PGR Student Travel and Conference Fund
The Informatics Graduate School has fund available to support PGR students’ travel and conference costs.
Applications for 23/24 funding are now open. Funding will be allocated on a first come, first served basis until available funds are gone. We expect to be able to approve 10 x (max) £500 awards.
It is expected that the IGS travel and conference funding is used as top-up funding only; students and supervisors should try in earnest to obtain full or partial funds from other sources first.
The IGS Management Committee will decide on awards and all travel and accommodation is expected to be booked through the University's travel provider - Diversity Travel.
Non-CDT students should contact their Level Admin team for help with booking accommodation and travel via Diversity Travel.
To be eligible to apply for IGS travel funds:
- The student must be fully matriculated on a (non-CDT) Informatics PGR programme lead by the University of Edinburgh
- The student must be due to present a paper or poster at a conference or workshop;
- The Student’s supervisor must approve the trip but lack the funds to pay full costs;
- The student’s research institute must approve the trip, but be unable to resource full costs;
- The student must not have already received any IGS travel funds within the current academic year;
- The student must not be in receipt of a scholarship that provides funding for travel.
- The student must not have submitted their thesis for examination.
Funds will be disbursed on a first-come-first-served basis until the available annual budget is spent.
The maximum amount that can be applied and awarded is £500.
Where there is more demand from students than the budget can support, IGS will select applicants on the basis of the following factors, additional to the above eligibility criteria:
- The prestige of the conference
- The nature of the student’s contribution to the paper that's to be presented
- Whether the student has contributed to services to the School; e.g., supplying teaching support.
Under the Good Stewardship of Public Funds, students should be aware that if they fail to attend the event paid for by IGS travel funds (or any other source of School/University funding), the student will be personally liable to repay at least 50% (potentially 100%) of the funded and incurred costs.
Applications can be considered throughout the year. All applications should be submitted by the student through the online application form and will be sent to their supervisor for approval before review.
Students should ensure that they submit their application at least 2 months before the event (if not 3 months), to allow enough time to make travel bookings and take advantage of cheaper tickets/accommodation.
Where a student needs to apply for a visa to attend the event, they should apply for funding in enough time that the visa will be issued in time for the trip and ensure that there is sufficient time in advance of that to review the application.
Links to University and School guidance on booking travel is here: Booking travel
PGR students submitting an expense claim against the School-IGS budget (budget holder - Lindsey Fox) must follow the offline process as described here:
Some no-CDT PGR students are offered a scholarship which includes an individual "Research Training Support Grant (RTSG) allowance. This mostly refers to those in receipt of an "Informatics Global PhD Scholarship (IGPS)", a Deepmind PhD Scholarship or a non-Informatics CDT or DTP studentship.
RTSG funding can be used (for example) to support the purchasing of specialist equipment required for delivering research and/or conference attendance.
Students wishing to spend their RTSG funding need to seek pre-approval of the spend via submission of the Apply Now form (below). The form/request will go to the IGS Manager (or other relevant budget holder) and the request will be considered and (hopefully) approved. Approval will be communicated to the student via email and once this approval is given, spending of the approved funds can occur.
Conference registrations - It is usually easiest for conference registration to be purchased as a personal expense and then claim that back via an expense claim. However, personal costs that would put a student in a position of potential hardship whilst waiting for expense reimbursement should not be incurred.
Travel and accommodation - once approval of spend has been given, the Level Admin team can assist PGR students with making travel and accommodation bookings via Diversity Travel. When completing the LA travel requisition form, put IGS Manager as the budget holder / approver for the IGPS funding. Level Admin can then contact the IGS Manager for the P&M coding for the DT invoice once they have a travel / accommodation quote.
Computing equipment - advise the Computing Support team that you have pre-approval of funding from the IGS Manager. The Computing Support person procuring the equipment will then contact the the IGS Manager for the P&M charging codes.
Things to note:
- If you are unsure if you have a scholarship with an RTSG allocation, please check your original offer letter (which can be viewed via the EUCLID admissions portal).
- No spend against RTSG allocations should be incurred until budget holder approval has been given. If spend occurs without budget holder approval, funds will not be reimbursed.
- All University procurement of travel and accommodation must go through DT. No funds will be reimbursed if travel and accommodation has been booked outside of Diversity Travel.
- non-CDT RTSG funding allocations do not carry over to future financial years if unspent.