You're pledging to donate if the project hits its minimum goal and gets approved. If not, your funds will be returned.
$4,500 left to reach the funding goal.
I’m an independent AI safety/governance researcher based in Chennai, India, requesting travel funding to present my research on a framework for qualifying AI agents before they’re permitted to execute actions at two upcoming venues: a NeurIPS 2026 workshop (Sydney, Dec 11–12, 2026) and the 15th Computing Conference 2027 (London, Jul 8–9, 2027). This funding covers flights, accommodation, and conference registration for both trips.
The goal is to present PEAQ to two audiences that matter for different reasons. One is the NeurIPS workshop audience is ML-safety researchers who can stress-test the technical framing of pre-execution qualification, while the Computing Conference audience is a broader systems/computing community where surfacing agent-safety work outside the usual AI-safety circles helps the ideas travel further. I’ll achieve this simply by attending, presenting the accepted papers and using the time on-site to build relationships with researchers and practitioners working on related problems (e.g., Singapore’s AI safety ecosystem, which I’ve been independently reaching out to in parallel).
I know this has worked because both papers presented as scheduled, (1) direct feedback from workshop/conference attendees incorporated into the next iteration of the PEAQ framework and (2) at least one new research contact or collaboration opportunity from each event that might be something I can point to concretely afterward, not just attendance for its own sake.
Sydney (NeurIPS 2026, Dec 2026 —main conference site)
Round-trip flight Chennai–Sydney (Dec, peak fares): $1,100
5 nights, budget hotel near ICC Sydney ($107/night baseline): $750
Registration (non-academic/industry rate — NeurIPS hasn’t published 2026 non-student pricing yet, based on recent years’ $900–1,200 range): $1,000 (confirm once NeurIPS posts final pricing)
Sydney subtotal: $2,850
London (15th Computing Conference 2027, Jul 2027)
Round-trip flight Chennai–London (Jul): $750
3 nights, budget hotel near Clayton Hotel Chiswick venue ($75–100/night): $300
Registration (£400–650 published range, midpoint ~£500 → USD): $635
London subtotal: ~$1,685
I’m the sole researcher on this. Relevant track record: two prior publications (an IEEE conference paper at ICNGCS 2025, and a journal paper in IJIRT on depression-subtype classification), the PEAQ framework itself and a paper recently accepted at a NeurIPS 2026 workshop.
The most likely failure mode is simply not being able to afford the travel and missing one or both presentation slots the papers remain accepted and published regardless, but I lose the in-person feedback and networking value, which is the main thing this funding is for.
None, this would be my first external funding.