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-125 Meeting in Shenzhen, China, in March 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.
Interested applicants should fill out the IRTF Travel Grant Application form.
Please contact us as travel-grants@irtf.org if you have any problems accessing the form.
If the applicant is a PhD student, their adviser must also send a letter of support to travel-grants@irtf.org verifying 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.
We will confirm receipt of travel grant applications by email. If you do not receive confirmation within 48 hours of submission please contact the IRTF Chair to confirm.
Important dates are as follows:
| Diversity grant application deadline | November 14, 2025 |
| Diversity grant notification deadline | November 26, 2025 |
| IETF-125 Meeting in Shenzhen | March 14-20, 2026 |
Selection Committee
Applicants will be reviewed by a selection committee comprising:
| Sofía Celi | Brave |
| Jane Coffin | Connect Humanity |
| Lars Eggert | Mozilla |
| Reese Enghardt | Netflix |
| Dirk Kutscher | HKUST(GZ) |
| Allison Mankin | Salesforce |
| Colin Perkins | University of Glasgow |
| Marie-Jose Montpetit | |
| Eve Schooler | University of Oxford |
| Melinda Shore | No Mountain Software |
| 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.