Diversity Travel Grants
The IRTF is pleased to be able to provide a number of Diversity Travel Grants, plus a number of fee waivers, to attend research group meetings and workshops.
Diversity Travel Grants
We are pleased to offer a number of Diversity Travel Grants to support early-career academics and PhD students from under-represented groups to attend the IRTF meetings co-located with the IETF-127 Meeting in San Francisco, California, in November 2026.
The selection criteria for IRTF Diversity Grants will prioritize people who:
- Are from a demographic that is under-represented in the IRTF and would have difficulty getting to the IETF meeting otherwise;
- Are PhD students or early-career academics (PhD students should have completed at least one year of full-time study in their PhD programme; early-career academics should normally be within their first four years of paid post-PhD employment at a University or other research institute);
- Can demonstrate engagement with research of relevance to the IRTF (work of relevance to all areas of IRTF will be considered, and specific contributions to IRTF Research Groups, such as presentations are encouraged).
Note: IRTF Diversity Grants will be available for repeat meeting attendance to encourage connection building and developing sustainable engagement with the community. However, it is expected that applicants use them to develop connections that help them find independent funding resources, hence IRTF Diversity Grant funding will be prioritized for candidates who have received no more than two (in exceptional cases three) grants before.
If the applicant is a PhD student, their adviser must also provide a letter of support that must be uploaded at the time of submission. This letter must verify the applicant’s good standing in the institution, and confirming that they have completed at least one year of full-time (or equivalent part-time) PhD study.
Please submit your application at https://irtf-travel-grants-ietf127.hotcrp.com/paper/new (create a HotCRP account if you do not already have one).
Please contact us as travel-grants@irtf.org if you have any questions.
Important dates are as follows:
| Diversity grant application deadline | July 03, 2026 |
| Diversity grant notification deadline | July 22, 2026 |
| IETF-127 Meeting in San Francisco | November 14-20, 2026 |
Selection Committee
Applicants will be reviewed by a selection committee comprising:
| Ignacio Castro | Queen Mary University of London |
| Sofía Celi | Brave |
| Jane Coffin | Connect Humanity |
| Juan Andres Fraire | INRIA |
| Lars Eggert | Mozilla |
| Reese Enghardt | Netflix |
| Dirk Kutscher | University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer |
| Allison Mankin | Salesforce |
| Ali Rezaki | Nokia |
| Marie-Jose Montpetit | |
| Colin Perkins | University of Glasgow |
| Dave Oran | Network Systems Research & Design |
| Eve Schooler | University of Oxford |
| Brian Trammell | |
| Lixia Zhang | UCLA |
IRTF diversity travel grants are supported by Netflix, Comcast, Akamai, and Google.
Fee waivers for remote attendance are available under a separate programme and are not covered by these diversity grants.