Our purpose in giving financial aid is to encourage participation of i) young researchers, ii) students, and iii) interested practitioners from other disciplines for whom Interface is not a mainstream conference and who could not otherwise afford to attend. We try to spread the aid among applicants in a way that does the most good for the most number of people. Usually this means that we do not provide aid to attendees from commercial organizations, or cover anyone's expenses entirely. In fact, the maximum award to any individual is limited to $500.

Preference is given to people in categories i), ii), and ii) above who are presenting authors and who have never attended an Interface Symposium. Among similarly qualified candidates, we try to match the level of aid roughly to the level of expenses (up to the $500 maximum). Recipients of financial aid are expected to attend the entire symposium.

Due to restrictions imposed on us by our funding sources, all Interface financial aid is in the form of reimbursements for allowable expenses. Therefore, aid recipients need to cover their own expenses, and fill out the reimbursement form that will be available on the Interface 2006 website after the meeting. The following rules apply:

• Original receipts must be provided for all expenses to be reimbursed (including meals).
  
  
• Only reasonable expenses will be covered (for example no limousines, massages, in-room movies, club cover charges, etc).
  
  
• We can not reimburse foreign travel. That means if you are coming from outside the United States, we can not cover any expense for travel that originates or terminates outside the United States. Submit receipts only for charges incurred in the US.