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Budget

The general process of drawing up a budget for gaining access to HDR Research and Conference Funding is described here. The following infiormation is being provided to help Computing HDR students in this regard.

• An HDR student must submit an application for access to HDR Project Support Funds within the first six months of enroling in the HDR program, and submit it alongwith the research proposal. In this application, among other things, they should provide justification for any expenses they deem necessary for successfully completing their research project.
• All other students should submit this application in the beginning of each financial year. In 2009, the Faculty of Science deadline for this is March 31st.
• It may be safely assumed that given sufficient justification, up to $12,000 will be made available to PhD students (and up to $6,000 to MPhil students) over the period of their candidature to support their project related activities. In the context of computing, it is by and large presentation of their research work at academic forums such as conferences and workshops. They should consult their thesis supervisors to plan how best they can utilize this fund.
• Students should accordingly complete the budget template (a spdeadsheet) and submit it as a supplement to this application. The application will be deemed incomplete in absence of an accompanying budget. This spreadsheet also provides a sample prepared budget to help the students.
• In order to estimate the travels involved, students are suggested to put in 50% of the per diem rate allowed by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). These rates can be found in this document.
• The completed application and budget, duely signed by the student and the supervisor, should be submitted (in hard copy) to the departmental executive officer, Melina Chan in the department office (E6A 361), and the soft copies emailed to the departmental administrator Sherrie Gu (sherrie AT science DOT mq DOT edu DOT au) for further processing.
• Toward the end of every financial year, the students will get the opportunity to request variation to the budget in light of the progress made in the project.
• This procedure is being introduced in 2009 for the first time. Since none of the existing students submitted a budget In previous years, this funding was available in the form of ICS Post Graduate Research Fellowship. ICS-PGRF no longer exists. However, existing students must take into account the funds they have already accessed as ICS-PGRF while preparing the budget. If they have acleady spent x dollars from ICS-PGRF, then the budget they prepare must not exceed $(12,000 -x).
• Please note that the budget covers three financial years starting with the current year. So, while for the full time (new) students, the budget will cover most of their research activities and expenses (international PhD students are expected to finish the research work in about three years, and spend the subsquent six months to write up), in case of part-time students, the budget may only partially cover the period over which they will carry out their research activities.
• A student who has already accessed the maximum allowable amount from HDR Project support fund should not feel obliged to submit a budget.

Students can access HDR support fund only against the budget they have submitted. Please see the procedure to access HDR budget support fund on how to do this.