Wednesday, October 5, 2016

SageMath: "it's not research"

The University of Washington (UW) mathematics department has funding for grad students to "travel to conferences". What sort of travel funding?

  • The department has some money available.
  • The UW Graduate school has some money available: They only provide funding for students giving a talk or presenting a poster.
  • The UW GPSS has some money available: contact them directly to apply (they only provide funds for "active conference participation", which I think means giving a talk, presenting a poster, or similar)

One of my two Ph.D. students at UW asked our Grad program director: "I'll be going to Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM) to help out at the SageMath booth. Is this a thing I can get funding for?"

ANSWER: Travel funds are primarily meant to support research, so although I appreciate people helping out at the SageMath booth, I think that's not the best use of the department's money.

I think this "it's not research" perspective on the value of mathematical software is unfortunate and shortsighted. Moreover, it's especially surprising as the person who wrote the above answer has contributed substantially to the algebraic topology functionality of Sage itself, so he knows exactly what Sage is.

Sigh. Can some blessed person with an NSF grant out there pay for this grad student's travel expenses to help with the Sage booth? Or do I have to use the handful of $10, $50, etc., donations I've got the last few months for this purpose?