Travel: NSF Student Travel Grant for the Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2025) Conference

This award provides funding to support about six promising U.S.-based graduate students to participate in the Doctoral Consortium at the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference in June 2025. IDC is the leading international conference for researchers, educators, and practitioners to share the latest research findings, innovative methodologies, and new technologies in the areas of child-centered design, learning, and interaction. The IDC doctoral consortium is a forum where students and research mentors create an opportunity for constructive and critical refinement of the research activities of the doctoral students within this important research area. Students in the doctoral consortium will present their research questions, approach, and agenda, and receive feedback from faculty mentors and peers. The constructive feedback will enrich their research by enabling them to better articulate their research focus, and refine their research methods and approaches. Participation in the doctoral consortium helps to create a network that strengthens the overall research community. Supporting student travel is important because attending conferences is expensive for students; the IDC doctoral consortium is targeted towards students who are still in the developing stages of becoming an effective researcher and who may not have financial support to attend the conference otherwise. To ensure that a broad range of qualified students with financial need attend, the availability of funds will be widely advertised. Students will submit applications that make the relevance of their research to IDC clear, as well as statements from their faculty advisors about the student's progress and financial need. Students will be selected based on quality of the application, benefit they will receive from participating in the doctoral consortium, and their need for both financial support and additional professional mentoring beyond what is available at their local institution. 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.