Undergrad Sole-author NeurIPS 2026 Main Track paper: travel to present in Sydney

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Md Azizul Hakim

created Oct 13, 2026

Project summary

I'm MD Azizul Hakim, from Bangladesh. My paper on test-time reasoning in LLMs got accepted as a poster at NeurIPS 2026, and I'm the only author. NeurIPS is in Sydney this December. I just finished a 4-year diploma which is equivalent to HSC and haven't started my bachelor's yet. I don't have the money to get there, so I'm asking for help with the trip.

Paper: https://neurips.cc/virtual/2026/loc/sydney/poster/150721

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

I want to present my poster in person and talk with people who work on reasoning models. I completed this paper alone, with no lab or supervisor, and I tested 50 models on 6 benchmarks (over 67,000 evaluations). I'm also applying for fully funded bachelor's programs abroad, and meeting researchers in Sydney would help me a lot with that.

How will this funding be used?
Total cost: $3,800

Minimum required: $550 for pass

Breakdown:

NeurIPS registration (conference sessions and tutorials): $550

Accommodation: $1,000

Round-trip flight, Dhaka to Sydney: $1,500

Meals: $400

Local transportation: $250

Poster printing: $100

Total: $3,800

Other funding: QRT and Citadel both rejected my applications. I have applied for NeurIPS financial assistance. As this is my accepted paper, and I am an early-career, sole author, they may give me complimentary registration. If they do, I will reduce my request by $550.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

It's just me. Besides the NeurIPS paper, I have a Scientific Reports paper, three IEEE conference papers, and three arXiv preprints. I'm also a Kaggle Notebooks Master.

My website is https://logicsame.github.io/md-hakim.github.io/ and my Google Scholar is https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jVyIovcAAAAJ

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

If I can't raise the money, I can't go. The paper stays in the proceedings, but NeurIPS can remove papers when no author presents in person, so I could lose it. Other grants may not come through in time, or my visa could be delayed.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

0 so far!

@gnutella Thanks a lot for your huge donation!

@azizulhakim8291 Congrats and good luck!

Hope you will do great research like that in future! Love your spirit

t@aliqramalaheehridoy Thanks a lot brother for your contribution at my hard situation.

@mnaufil1 thanks for contributing to my journey.

Hi @Austin, since I cannot manually adjust the project timeline from my dashboard, could you please help me extend the crowdfunding closing date from October 18th to November 7th? This will give potential backers a bit more time to discover and support the campaign before my travel to Sydney for NeurIPS 2026 this December. Thank you

@azizulhakim8291 It looks like this got extended already -- I'm guessing Caroline did this, thanks!

BTW, I'd also recommend applying for https://bluedot.org/grants/rapid for grants like this.

@Austin Thank you for the reply and for recommending BlueDot Rapid Grants. I'm applying there too.

The NeurIPS deadlines are close, though. I'm the sole author and have to present in person, and I have no other funding. Could you help in either of these ways?

1. Share this project with Manifund regrantors or donors who might support it.

2. Back it yourself, even with a small amount, or point me to someone who can.

Any help would make a real difference. Thank you for your time.