Travel policy

The Creed and Kravitz labs encourage and support opportunities for you to attend and present at scientific conferences. Such presentations offer valuable critical feedback from your scientific peers and create networking opportunities that can help advance your career. This policy aims to support conference travel for all trainees in an equitable and financially sustainable manner.

Timeline for travel

1. Talk to your PI about attending the conference at least 6 months before any conference.
2. Take note of all relevant deadlines. There are ~15 lab members, please don't expect the PIs to keep track of deadlines or remind you of them.
3. Prepare abstracts at least 2 weeks before the submission deadline so that the PI and other authors have time to review, give feedback, and agree to their content.
4. Prepare posters and talks at least 2 weeks before the conference so you have time to practice and get feedback before you go. You should plan at least one practice session, either at lab meeting or arranged outside of lab meeting. (Side note: preparing posters early will leave time for fabric printing online if you don't like carrying poster tubes).
5. Lab members cannot deviate from this timeline, even if they pay for the conference on their own. Presenting your work is a public disclosure from the lab and the PI and all other authors must agree to the presentation.

Rules for travel

1. Outside of unique circumstances, the lab will only cover individuals that are presenting a poster or talk.
2. Lab members should apply for all sources of funding associated with travel. This includes conference travel awards, graduate student travel funds, and other fellowship travel funds as relevant. Applying for these sources of funding helps the lab financially, and also helps build your CV if you win the awards.
3. Consistent with Wash U policies, the lab can only cover economy fares on flights and can only cover hotel stays for the nights relevant to the conference. Hotels/AirBNBs should be shared with another lab members (1 regular hotel room has 2 beds = 2 travelers).
4. Booking flights and hotels in advance will help secure the best prices and locations - if possible these should be booked at the time of registration, taking advantage of any discounts associated with the conference hotel block, etc.
5. Allowable expenses that are covered by the lab include conference registration, flights, ground transportation, accommodation, and a daily allowance for meals (specific per diem rates are here. Please keep/photograph itemized receipts without alcohol, as grant funds cannot be used for this). If the conference provides meals, traveler cannot also ask for a daily reimbursement for meals.
6. If you are submitting for reimbursement (see below), please do this as soon as you possibly can so the credit card can be reconciled. There are ~15 lab members, please minimize PIs involvement in arranging your travel or chasing you for receipts.
7. If you choose to add on vacation days after a meeting, all costs will be at your own expense. Per Wash U rules, extending your travel should not influence the cost of the return airfare for the conference.

Reimbursement procedures

You should use the lab ProCard to pay for conference registrations, hotel and flights in advance. You should not take the ProCard with you on your trip, so when you get to the hotel, you will often have to inform the hotel that you want the room charged to the card on file, and not to your personal card. Please send receipts for any ProCard expenses to the PI as soon as you receive them - again, 15 lab members, please don't make us chase you! For expenses during your trip that cannot be charged to the procard (taxis and meals), you will submit a reimbursement following the below instructions. Talk with your PI about whether you should submit receipts or use a per-diem rate for meals. Also consult the Wash U Per Diem policy.

To file for reimbursement for ground transportation and meals:

1. Log into Workday and Create Expense Report. Links on this page will take you to Wash U's travel policies and per diem rates:

2. In the "memo" field, include the person traveling, location, and conference info

3. Fill out Business Purpose and Grant (ask your PI for the grant or fund number) and click OK

4. On the Expense report page, click the Expense lines and add your expense

5. For each expense line, upload receipts and fill in relevant information for each expense.

6. Add additional expense lines for ground transportation, meals or per diem, etc.

7. Click Submit!

8. Check Workday for the next few days to see if there are any issues - if it comes back for corrections you won't get an email, only a Workday notification!

9. Once it processes it will be added to your paycheck