Travel to the South Bend
The conference venue is located at the Gillespie Conference Center, 53995 SR 933, South Bend, IN 46637; Phone 574-232-7700; Web http://www.gillespieconferencecenter.com/.
South Bend is conveniently located along Interstate-80 and near Highway 31, approximately 1h 30m east of Chicago. The closest airport is the South Bend International Airport. Larger airports, Chicago O'Hare and Midway, are approximately 2h from Notre Dame.
The Gillespie Conference Center at the Hilton Garden Inn South Bend is located off of I-80 Exit 77, on the north west border of the University of Notre Dame campus (see campus map here: http://map.nd.edu/).
Aside from car rental, the most convenient way to travel from the O'Hare or Midway airports in Chicago is via the Coach USA shuttle (http://www.coachusa.com/) to the South Bend Airport (Do not take the shuttle to 'Notre Dame', as this will place you ~1.5 miles from the conference venue). You can then take a taxi (http://flysbn.com/transportation/taxi-train-bus/) from the South Bend Airport to your hotel. Note that the Inn at St. Mary's (one of the two conference hotels) has a complementary shuttle that runs to and from the airport, though you will need to contact them if you want to choose this option. (Note that the conference venue is attached to one of the conference hotels and adjacent to the other, so it is not necessary to have a car.)
Note: Those interested in car-pooling to/from O'Hare airport may want to contact Jonas Lippuner (jlippuner@tapir.caltech.edu) and/or coordinate car-pooling via the GoogleDocs spreadsheet that he set-up: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10wLQaHiNJnK9hTOi70oSJbZ3xphCAWwQGLBU3uuZm38/edit#gid=0.