Purpose of the Grants

The MICCAI Registration and Travel Grants aim to provide financial support for members of the MICCAI community, especially those from diverse and underserved backgrounds, to participate in annual MICCAI conferences. Diversity here is used as a short form for “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion”, encompassing a wider range of underrepresented characteristics in the scientific community including but not limited to underrepresented gender and racial/ethnic groups, differing abilities, and lower-income countries and countries where few papers are received at MICCAI conferences.

Grant Eligibility

All members of the MICCAI community are eligible to apply for the MICCAI Registration and Travel Grants. The selection of the grantees will prioritize the following criteria:

• Authors of a paper accepted in the MICCAI conference of that year
• Candidates who are a current student or within two years of their terminal degree (i.e., MICCAI Young Scientists), or those within four years of their terminal degree (i.e., Early-Career Scientists).
• Candidates from underserved gender and racial/ethnicity groups, differing abilities, low-income and lower-middle-income countries, or countries that are underrepresented in MICCAI conferences
• Candidates with other diverse backgrounds

The MICCAI Registration and Travel Grants are intended to support in-person participation in the MICCAI conference. If a selected grantee is not able to attend the conference in person, the grant will go to the next candidate on the ranked list.

Grant Coordination

The Executive Secretary of the MICCAI Society will oversee the selection process which is to be conducted in a fair manner. A grant committee will be set up for this purpose, with representation from the MICCAI Student Board, the MICCAI Society Diversity Working Group, Women in MICCAI, and the MICCAI annual Conference Organisation, chaired by the Executive Secretary of the MICCAI Society. The final draft of the grant recipients will be sent to the MICCAI Society Secretariat before formal notification is sent to the students.

In order to distribute the grants in a fair manner, we recommend giving no more than one grant to any one research group (and to factor in that, ideally, there is only one per university, though it is recognised that there may be different groups in any one university which may justify multiple grants per institution).

Selection Process

The grant selection process will start with a call for applications open around the time of early acceptance notifications. The adjudication and notification process will be carried out on a rolling basis, to allow time for the grantees to make travel arrangements and obtain visas to the host country if needed. If a grantee cannot attend the conference for any reason, the grant will be withdrawn and given to the next eligible candidate.

The online form to collect the applicant’s information will not be prescriptive in the diversity terms used and instead will allow individual descriptions provided by the applicant. Due to the potentially sensitive nature of this diversity information, it will only be collected directly from the applicant via the online form, not passed on to anyone outside of the selection committee, and only be used for the purpose of grant selection and data will be purged after the conference.

Announcement

The grant recipients will be notified by email and, in the case of a young scientist, be requested to submit confirmation of young scientist status.

The final list of grant recipients, with their institutional affiliation, will be announced on the Conference website at the time of the conference. A summary slide about the MICCAI Registration and Travel Grants will be presented at the Award Ceremony. Due to the large number of grant recipients, names are usually not listed or read out aloud.

Financing

The MICCAI Society will support 25 Registration Grants (approximately 20 young scientists and 5 non-young-scientists) and 15 Travel Grants annually. The Registration Grants will be in the form of free registration to the main conference and its satellite events along with one-year MICCAI membership. The Travel Grants will provide financial support of up to $2,500 per grant to contribute towards conference registration, MICCAI membership, lodging, and travel costs.

Distribution of the Grants

Recipients of the MICCAI Registration and Travel Grants will be receiving waiver codes to cover conference and satellite event registrations and one-year MICCAI Society membership fee. Recipients of the MICCAI Travel Grants will also work with dedicated personnel to book travel and lodging with the funds.

Questions?

Questions should be directed to the Executive Secretary of the MICCAI Society.

Definition and Guidelines; Last Updated: May 7, 2024