The SURGE collaboration has limited funding to support travel expenses for members of the collaboration, invited speakers, and students and postdocs with a collaboration member supervisor. For those interested in this support, please first contact Dorothy Davis and Bjoern Schenke as soon as possible to see if the collaboration can reimburse the travel expenses. This includes the travel to the meeting, accommodation, per diem and local transportation.
The travel reimbursement is handled through the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), and if you are applying for the travel reimbursement you must have a BNL Guest appointment for the dates of the travel. The registration for the guest appointment must be done before the meeting. This process can take some weeks and for this reason it is highly recommended to register as soon as possible.
Here is a guideline for applying for the travel reimbursement. The following things must be done before the meeting:
- Please contact Dorothy Davis regarding your travel plans and ensure to cc Bjoern Schenke in the email. Please also sign this document and include it in the email. This gives Dorothy permission to process your travel reimbursements.
- Apply for a BNL guest appointment using this link: https://guest.bnl.gov/guestRegist.asp.
- In the application, list Bjoern Schenke as your host. In the justification, please be very specific and say that you are an invited to the Surge Collaboration meeting at UCLA. Please also add a sentence about the science that will be discusses at the meeting. If you are giving a talk, please add the tentative talk title here as well. If any questions do not apply to you, please choose None, Unknown, or Not Applicable from the drop-down menu. You will receive an E-mail notification once approved. The approval process takes a couple of weeks, so it is best to submit it sooner than later. Please fill in every question on the form.
After the meeting, please E-mail dorothyd@bnl.gov your travel receipts by PDF. All receipts must show a zero balance with the date it was purchased and how it was paid for. Receipts are not required for per diem. Students and postdocs should also include a letter from their collaboration member supervisor indicating the connection to the SURGE collaboration.
Please also set up direct deposit for the reimbursement by E-mailing this direct deposit form to cdupre@bnl.gov.
Please be advised that the reimbursement process will take a few weeks.
It is possible that the travel is approved even as late as a week before the meeting. For this reason, it is best to book the flights and the hotel before approval. When planning your trip note that to get the travel reimbursement you have to stay withing the BNL travel regulations. In practice, this means that the following things need to be taken into account:
- BNL can only cover allowable rate for hotel and per diem depending on the city. For Los Angeles, the daily limit for the hotel is $191. The per diem rates can be found here. An itemized hotel bill is required for reimbursement.
- The flight must be an economy seat on a US airline. The dates of the flight must match the dates of the meeting. You can arrive the day before and depart the day after if needed. A clear copy of the paid flight receipt will be required for flight reimbursement after the trip is over. The reimbursement for the flights is capped at $500.
- Local ransportation costs between your home and the airport, as well as between the airport and the meeting location, can also be covered.
For questions about the travel reimbursement, please contact Dorothy Davis: dorothyd@bnl.gov
