Attending scientific conferences is one of the best ways to accelerate your growth as a scientist. Conferences provide opportunities to present your research, receive feedback from experts, learn about the latest advances in your field, and build a professional network that can shape your future career. The value of attending a conference looks different at every stage of your scientific journey, as highlighted in following table:
| Career Stage | Example of Strong Conference Goals |
| Undergraduate | Explore graduate programs, learn about research areas, and meet potential mentors. |
| First-year PhD | Understand the current state of the field, identify open research questions, and build an initial professional network. |
| Mid-stage PhD | Receive feedback on ongoing work, find collaborators, and learn techniques to overcome research challenges. |
| Late-stage PhD | Increase visibility through presentations, connect with potential postdoctoral advisors or employers, and expand a professional network for future job opportunities. |
If you’re convinced of the value of attending a conference, there’s just one catch: conference registration, travel, and lodging can be expensive. Fortunately, travel grants are specifically designed to help offset these costs. This guide offers practical strategies for writing competitive travel grant applications and highlights several funding opportunities at the end.
What does a travel grant application require?
The good news is that applying to travel grants is often relatively low-effort —especially if you have already written an abstract for the conference. Many applications ask for similar materials and questions, so reapplying is easy. In fact, many questions you encounter, such as why you want to attend the conference, how it will support your development, and what you hope to gain from the experience, are worth developing thoughtfully because you’ll likely use these ideas again in future applications and other professional writing.
Most travel grants ask applicants to explain…
- Why this specific conference is a good fit for your research or career goals.
- How attending will contribute to your professional development.
- What you hope to gain (e.g., feedback, collaborations, technical skills, career exploration).
- How you will contribute to the conference (e.g., poster, oral presentation, panel).
- Why financial support is needed and how the grant would make attendance possible.
Writing your application materials
Tips for how to get started:
Before you start writing, look at the conference itself for concrete details you can use to build your case for why you need to attend. The strongest applications show that you have a clear plan for how you will use the conference, rather than simply stating that it will be “valuable.”
- Check whether the conference agenda is available. Look for keynote speakers, talks, and sessions that connect directly to your research.
- Look for specific workshops and career-development opportunities. Technical workshops can help you learn methods relevant to your research, while career panels, grant-writing sessions, or professional-development events can connect to your longer-term goals.
- Ask whether someone from your lab has attended before. Talk to your advisor or labmates about what they gained from the conference. Their experiences can give you concrete examples of how attending could benefit your research or career.
Describe your goals and relevant research with concrete details
Travel grant applications ask you to explain why attending this specific conference will be valuable to you. Avoid broad statements like “I want to learn,” “I want to network,” or “this will help my career.” Instead, identify specific sessions, researchers, workshops, presentations and explain how they connect to your current research or career goals.
The tables below provide examples of what vague versus concrete statements look like for two different questions.
How does the conference benefit you?
| Vague | Concrete |
| I want to learn about the latest research in my field. | I want to attend the session on engineered microbial communities to learn how other groups measure spatial organization, since my lab is currently evaluating imaging methods for microbial aggregates. |
| I hope to network with other researchers. | I hope to connect with researchers developing computational models of tissue regeneration, as their approaches could provide new perspectives for analyzing my experimental data. |
| This conference will help my career. | The conference includes an industry career panel featuring scientists from Genentech and Ginkgo Bioworks, giving me an opportunity to learn about careers in biotechnology as I begin exploring internships. |
| I want feedback on my research. | Presenting my poster will allow me to receive feedback on my experimental design before I begin a new round of experiments this fall. |
| I want to meet professors. | Several faculty whose work I have cited, including keynote speakers, will be attending. Discussing my research with them could help refine my approach and identify opportunities for future collaboration. |
| I want to attend workshops. | The conference offers a grant-writing workshop specifically for graduate students, which aligns with my goal of applying for an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship next year. |
| I want to present my work. | Presenting my first conference poster will help me practice communicating my research to experts outside my lab and strengthen my scientific presentation skills. |
| This conference will help me build connections. | I plan to meet researchers from laboratories using complementary computational modeling approaches, which could lead to collaborations that strengthen my future publications. |
How does your research experience relate to the conference?
| Vague | Concrete |
| My past research prepared me for this conference. | Through my previous work developing computational models of microbial growth, I became interested in predicting community behavior. I now want to attend talks on community modeling to learn how researchers are applying similar approaches to more complex systems. |
| I want to learn new techniques. | My previous research involved analyzing bulk microbial growth, while my current project requires measuring interactions at the single-cell level. I plan to attend the single-cell analysis workshop to develop tools that will help me make this transition. |
If you’re having trouble turning your experiences and goals into a compelling application, BE CommKit has additional resources that can help. The Elevator Pitch provides strategies for clearly and concisely communicating your research and its significance, while the Graduate School Personal Statement offers advice on connecting your experiences, goals, and motivations into a cohesive narrative. Although these resources are not specific to travel grants, the same skills can help you write a stronger application.
Find your travel grant!
Take the time to search for grants that are relevant to you as soon as you plan to attend the conference. Start by checking the conference website, your professional societies, your department or graduate school, and organizations that support researchers from particular backgrounds or career stages.
Below is a list of travel grants we found. Use this table as a starting point. Eligibility, award amounts, and application requirements vary, so be sure to check each opportunity’s current guidelines and deadlines before applying.
| Travel Grant | Who Can Apply? | Award | Evaluation Criteria | Application Materials |
| MIT OGE Conference Grant | MIT graduate students attending virtual, domestic, or international conferences where they will present a poster, paper, or serve as a panelist |
Up to $1,000 (in-person) or $500 (virtual) |
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| Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Career Development Award | BMES members (graduate students, postdocs, and early-career scientists from underrepresented populations or conducting health disparities research) | Varies |
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| AIChE Society for Biological Engineering (SBE) Conference Grant | Students attending SBE- or AIChE-related conferences | Helps cover conference registration and travel expenses |
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| IGEN Conference Travel Award | Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students affiliated with participating partner organizations attending national scientific meetings |
Up to $1,000 for travel, lodging, and registration |
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| MIT Undergraduate Association Travel Grant | MIT undergraduate students attending professional or academic conferences that enhance their undergraduate experience beyond MIT |
Up to $1,000 |
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| AACR Travel Grants & Scholar-in-Training Awards | Early-career scientists and trainees attending AACR meetings; eligibility varies by award and may include graduate students, postdocs, medical students, undergraduates, or researchers meeting specific demographic or scientific criteria | Varies by conference and award |
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| American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Travel Awards | Eligibility varies by award; ASM offers travel awards for graduate students, postdocs, fellows, and other researchers attending ASM meetings |
$1,000–$2,000 plus registration for some awards |
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Good luck finding and applying to the travel grants that suit you!
Blog post written by BECL Fellow, Kelly Teitel, with editing help from BECL Manager Han Xu.
Posted Aug 2026.