This grant provides support for the Build-A-Cell research coordination network, a collaborative, international community of more than 100 scientists drawn from about 100 labs across the globe whose work focuses on building synthetic cells. The Build-A-Cell network will use Sloan grant funding to run two in-person workshops each year and to support ongoing working groups that collaborate between workshops. The workshops are designed as hands-on working meetings that bring participants together to exchange methods, compare results, identify shared technical challenges, and coordinate community-led projects. The working groups will pursue targeted objectives across areas such as modeling, integration of cell components, education and outreach, biosafety and security, international engagement and policy, and biomanufacturing. Sloan funds will be used to support the logistics needed to sustain these activities, including travel support for workshop participation and partial support for a coordinator who will organize meetings and help keep working groups moving.

Rebuilding after extreme weather events is inevitably a complicated, emotionally fraught process, as homeowners decide whether and how to rebuild their properties. Current policies in the United States favor “like for like” rebuilds that merely replace damaged or destroyed property. However, these policies do not account for preexisting inequities that make some communities more vulnerable to extreme weather or energy insecurity in the first place. In many cases, it would be more beneficial if households could instead improve the overall quality and energy characteristics of their homes during reconstruction, especially as climate-related disasters become more frequent and destructive.Researchers at Stanford University, University of Maryland, College Park, and The Ohio State University will undertake a multi-pronged effort to examine  how existing rebuilding efforts have impacted energy resiliency in three cities in different stages of recovery after extreme weather disasters: Houston, Texas after Hurricane Harvey in 2017; Asheville, North Carolina after Hurricane Helene in 2024; and Los Angeles, California after the Palisades Fire in 2025. The researchers will then partner with local chapters of the American Red Cross (ARC) to design and pilot a novel intervention that will provide households who have lost their homes with tailored resources to facilitate energy efficient rebuilding. This intervention is expected to be a combination of providing targeted information resources along with access to an in-person “rebuilding ambassador” who will help households make better sense of the provided information about their rebuilding options, all with the goal of improving post-disaster rebuilding and climate resilience efforts. The expectation is that this piloted intervention could be subsequently scaled and expanded to other geographies facing similar challenges around the country.

There is a growing need to strengthen the connections between energy system researchers and the network of university energy research centers. To address this challenge, in 2019 representatives from university energy research centers across the United States came together to form the University Energy Institute Leadership Collaborative (UEILC) to strengthen connections between energy system researchers and foster collaboration between different research centers. This grant supports the continued growth of the UEILC network in three ways. First, it will establish a competitive process to identify, select, and fund nine “bridge builder” fellowships to support essential leadership staff at university energy research centers, who are key to the successful operation of these institutions yet often rely on external grants to sustain their roles. These fellowships will be awarded for two years at $20,000 per year. Second, the grant will provide direct support for UEILC annual summit convenings for the next three years, primarily in the form of travel support for meeting attendees. Third, the grant will support the ongoing management of the UEILC Executive Committee to oversee the fellowship program and continue growing the UEILC network.  

This grant provides continued support for the Carnegie Mellon Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), which is directed by Sayeed Choudhury. With grant support, the OSPO will pilot and refine the ENGIN Software Foundation (ESF), which will advise and potentially provide an ongoing home for open source projects in the academic community. ESF will begin by providing high-touch analysis and support for a small set of pre-selected open source projects before scaling to more projects in subsequent years. The work at ESF could offer a blueprint for other universities and could eventually support projects originally developed at other institutions. ?The Foundation has provided $649,997 since 2022 in support of the Carnegie Mellon OSPO.