Travel policy

Lab Travel Policy

Presenting your work at national and international meetings is an important career development step and my lab encourages and supports opportunities to present your results at scientific conferences. Presentation of your results not only provides excellent critical feedback from your scientific colleagues, but also gives you opportunities for networking to develop the relationships needed for making your next career move. Therefore, this policy is aimed to support conference travel for trainees in an equitable and financially sound way given limited grant funding.

1. At the beginning of the year we will decide in advance who is going to what conferences for the year. Please come prepared to this meeting with your preferences.

2. Individuals must use their own travel funds associated with their scholarships first.

3. Individuals without travel funds must apply for travel awards.

4. The lab will only cover early bird registration fees

5. The lab will only cover economy (cheapest) fares on flights booked 5 weeks in advance.

6. The lab will only cover individuals presenting a poster or oral presentation

7. The lab will only cover presentation of new data (the same abstract cannot be reused for different meetings unless it is updated with new data). This rule does not apply if the meetings are back-to-back. (ie ICRS and FENS)

8. The Lab can only provide funds up to $1500 for North American meetings or $2500 for overseas international meetings per student per year if they don’t already have travel awards.*This amount may change depending on number of trainees and lab funding

9. Allowable expenses include conference registration, flights, ground transportation, accommodation, up to $51 CAD (or $51 USD I US meeting, $75 CAD international meeting) per day for meals (itemized receipts required/no alcohol) only during the conference dates, as per university rules. If the conference provides meals, one cannot reimburse for meals.

10. You must keep all receipts - including the boarding passes and conference badges and deliver them to my admin assistant as soon as you possibly can so the credit card can be reconciled. I don't have time to chase you up for the receipts and Dolma should not have to do this either.

11. Once you receive your travel scholarships, you must write a cheque to the university of Calgary to reimburse the travel account. All remaining expenses can be claimed against the travel grant normal way.

12. You must share accommodation with other lab members as often as possible

13. The lab will not cover extra night hotel stays outside the conference dates.

14. If you choose to add on vacation days after a meeting, all costs will be at your own expense. Vacation flight stop-overs must be expensed on your own and should not influence the cost of the return airfare for the conference.