Informatics Graduate School Student Travel Grants

Policy Statement

The Graduate School budget includes funding for postgraduate student travel. All travel grants need to be approved in advance of the proposed trip by the Director of the Graduate School. Note that students can also seek funding from their Institutes and from research grants held by their supervisors, and other sources. Sometimes conferences offer partial travel subsidy to students, and these should always be applied for. These sources of funding (as well as students' personal funds) can be combined to fund a trip that is too expensive to be funded by the Graduate School on its own.

Travel grants will be considered favourably where the student is:
- within their normal period of study (for PhD students this is three years)
- presenting a paper at the conference/event
- not requesting a grant of more than £350
All other requests will be considered on a case by case basis, taking into account travel grants previously awarded and available funds.
Where a student is presenting a refereed paper at a significant international meeting outside Europe, a larger grant may be available.
The same source can fund other research expenses, for instance payments for experimental subjects.
In exceptional circumstances, research students beyond the normal period of study and MSc students can receive travel funding from the Graduate School.

Students are expected to take advantage of all available cheap fares and other discounts. For conference registration fees, only the early registration fee will be reimbursed. If there is a discount fee that requires membership in an organization, and the membership fee is less than the difference, then this can be included in the cost of the trip if the student is not already a member. Page charges cannot be reimbursed, nor can conference banquets or other social events when they are not automatically included in the registration fee.

Where the trip is to present a paper or poster, it must indicate your affiliation as School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. (Plus an institute, if you like.)

Travel grants to universities in the worldwide Universitas 21 network are allocated by the Scholarships Office, with an applications deadline in late February.

A possible external source of funding for research costs, up to £5K, is the Royal Academy of Engineering's Research Student Development Fellowships. Students apply in their first year of study for a funding to support a "Personal Development Plan" running for the remainder of their period of study. This may involve research support activities and materials, including consumables; travel to conferences or to undertake collaborative work; summer schools and short courses including transferrable skills and language courses; participation in competitions. This scheme is restricted to UK students and the deadline for applications is 1st November.

Procedure for applying for a grant

All travel grants need to be approved in advance of the proposed trip by the Director of the Graduate School.

Please fill in the form below and email it to the Informatics Graduate School office (informatics.gradschool@ed.ac.uk). Include information about the proposed trip and an accurate estimate of costings. If you are receiving funding for the trip from any other source (e.g. institute, grant, the conference itself) then this must be mentioned explicitly. Please put 'Travel Grant Request' as the subject line of the message.

NOTE Students funded by the Neuroinformatics Doctoral Training Centre should apply to the DTC for travel support.

A statement of support from the supervisor should be attached to the application or sent separately by email to the same address (informatics.gradschool@ed.ac.uk).

Allow at least two weeks between the completion of your application and the date you need to have a response.

Application Form

You can click here to open an email template in your default e-mail client .

Alternatively click here to see a text version of the form, which you can cut and paste into an email.

To see some examples of completed request forms click here.

Applications should be sent by email in plain text without use of Word, Latex. etc. Please do not send the application as an attachment.

IMPORTANT: Please send your e-mail application to informatics.gradschool@ed.ac.uk in the first instance, with 'Travel Grant Request' in the subject line.

Procedure for claiming money

Expense claims are processed by the Informatics Graduate School office (informatics.gradschool@ed.ac.uk).

Claim forms can be downloaded from the Finance website. Please note that you must use the paper claim form as we are not yet able to pay claims through the Electronic Expenses System (eExpenses). For instructions on how to complete the form please click here [PDF file].

Once the travel grant has been awarded and you have incurred the expenses, fill out a university claims form and attach the receipts and send it to the Informatics Graduate School office at the address below.

Please note that all expense claims involving a travel grant must be submitted directly to the Informatics Graduate School in the first instance. If part of your claim will be paid by another source (e.g. institute, research grant) then include a covering note with the details so the claim can be forwarded once the travel grant portion has been authorised for payment.

In exceptional circumstances, an advance payment can be arranged, contact the Informatics Graduate School office (informatics.gradschool@ed.ac.uk) for more details.

The financial year for the University runs from 1st August until 31st July the following year; note that this is not quite the same as the academic year. Please make sure when claiming for travel expenses that you claim within the current financial year.

Informatics Graduate School office contact details -	email:	informatics.gradschool@ed.ac.uk
	telephone:	(0131 6)51 7174
	address:	2.44 Informatics Forum Crichton Street EDINBURGH EH8 9AB

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