This grant provides funding for graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and early-career researchers to attend the 18th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USNCCM18) which will be held in Chicago, Illinois, 20-24 July 2025. USNCCMs are the flagship conferences of the US Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM), and the country’s premier computational mechanics meetings. USNCCM18 will provide a forum for bringing together graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and early-career researchers from academia, national laboratories and industry to confer on the latest advances and emerging frontiers in Computational Mechanics. USNCCM18 will feature 101 minisymposia encompassing a wide range of topics. These will include: Scientific Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence/Data-Driven Methods; Biomechanics/Computational Biology/Biosystems; Solid Mechanics and Materials; Soft Materials; Fluid Mechanics; Multi-Phase Mechanics and Fluid Structure Interactions; Nanoscale Phenomena; Advanced Manufacturing; Novel Computational Methods/Algorithms; Emerging Computing Paradigms; Geosystems and Climate Science; Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification; Optimization; Scientific Visualization, Extended and Augmented Reality. Additionally, the conference will introduce Late-Breaking Topics’ minisymposia, whose focus will be decided by the Congress Scientific Committee. USNCCM18 is expected to have around 1200 participants. The Congress will have extens