ALADDIN STUDENT TRAVEL POLICY

The ALADDIN Center believes it is important for students to publish papers and go to top conferences and workshops. For this reason, we agree to support any ALADDIN-associated student who is either an author of a paper at a conference/workshop, or will be presenting at a conference/workshop. The default amount of support is $500, but this can go up to $1000 for key conferences at remote locations (e.g. STOC in Greece). For students in their first two years, we will also fund one trip a year even if the student does not have a paper. You can augment the funds we give with other funds, and we encourage students to look for outside funds (often conferences will have some support for graduate students).

To receive funding from ALADDIN, you must:

(1) Request them at least one month ahead of time. Email your request to Susan Hrishenko, ALADDIN Adminstrator.

(2) Email an electronic copy of the paper and presentation to our web master Beatrice Anghelache so she can post it on our web site. You should also include a one- or two-paragraph description of the work written for a general audience (typically adapted from the abstract).

(3) Write a short trip report to send out to all theory students and perhaps present at the Wednesday theory lunch. This could include summaries of the best talks you went to, and anything else interesting that happened at the conference. If multiple students go to a conference, you could write this as a group.

Items 3 is useful to do in any case, independent of the funding. It is a useful way to organize your thoughts about what you have seen, as well as keeping other people in the community up to date on what is going on.

(4) Within 15 days of your return, submit your completed expense report [pdf] and all original receipts (photocopies are not accepted by Accounting) to Susan Hrishenko, ALADDIN Administrator. If you have been promised additional funding from other sources, please contact Susan Hrishenko before submitting any of your expenses; it is often faster and easier to submit one expense report for reimbursement from multiple grants. Please review the Travel Reimbursement Guidelines below to ensure that all of your expenses are in keeping with CMU and NSF policies; expenses that violate these policies cannot (and will not) be reimbursed.

Travel Reimbursement Guidelines

The following expenses cannot be reimbursed under the combined policies of CMU and the NSF:

Alcoholic beverages and entertainment (e.g., theater productions, sporting, or other social events)
Flights on non-U.S. flag air carriers (with very few exceptions)
"No-show" charges for hotel and car service
Car rental insurance purchased for domestic travel (CMU insurance covers domestic car rentals)
Personal telephone charges in excess of reasonable calls home, generally one per day
In-room movies
Personal grooming services, such as barbers, hairdressers and shoe shines
Child care
Corporate card delinquency fees or finance charges
Dues in private clubs
Frequent flier and other similar awards for hotel and car rentals
Gym and recreational fees, including massages and saunas
Insurance costs such as life insurance, flight insurance, personal automobile insurance and baggage insurance
Laundry or valet service for travel of fewer than five days
Lost baggage
Loss or theft of cash advance money, airline tickets, personal funds or property
Parking tickets or traffic violations
Personal automobile repairs
Personal credit card annual fees
Pet care
Upgrades (air, hotel, car, etc.)

The full CMU policy can be found at http://www.cmu.edu/policies/documents/Travel.html