In a bid to uplift the data science that has expanded mostly over the past few years, SIGKDD has launched a Community Impact Program to provide funding to aspiring data scientists with projects to ensure data science is promoted in the right direction. The funded projects will be required to show their final results or outcome at the annual KDD conference, and the project duration must be of one year. The project’s proposals will be judged by a committee consisting of Mohammed Zaki, Jure Leskovec, Jian Pei and Johannes Gehrke.

The Community Impact Program is looking to fund those projects which are capable of creating a positive impact on society and expand the outreach of data science. Some of the related topics that one may cover as listed down by the program include:

• Enhance data science community engagement
• Expand awareness of data science
• Increase diversity, inclusion, and participation in data science
• Increase the societal impact of data science
• Influence public policy and decision making through data science
• Support for data science schools to broaden participation
• Support for data science hackathons and summer schools

Point to be noted that the Impact Program is not a research program and any such ideas or submissions will neither be accepted nor entertained. The Impact Program aims to fund a minimum of 10 projects with a funding range between $10k-$50k. All teams are required to provide complete transparency of where and how the funds have been used. If justified, more funding will be provided to the team in need. 

The proposals must be made within five pages that are single-spaced by using 12-point font and 1-inch margins along with illustrations and references. Several other guidelines that proposals must follow are:

• An overview of the proposed project emphasizing its impact on the data science community and any unique aspects.
• A description of a concrete project plan and the expected outcomes.
• A brief description of the PI and key personnel and institutions and their responsibilities.
• A description of project tracking metrics.
• The plan for continuation posts the grant-period if relevant.
• A brief justification of the need for the SIGKDD support.
• An estimated budget broken down by major areas, such as personnel, venue, equipment, consumable supplies, etc.
• A list/description of dependencies.

The project proposals are to be submitted on the given link by June 15, 2020.