Funds from this grant provide two years of administrative and operational support for the business and economics desk of the Conversation U.S., an experimental new platform in journalism.  Based on similar efforts already successfully launched in the United Kingdom and Australia, the Conversation U.S. is an experiment in direct journalism, providing a platform where researchers and experts write public-facing news and analysis pieces themselves, published under their own bylines, which are then edited in collaboration with experienced journalists for clarity and objectivity.  Content produced by the Conversation is released to the public free of intellectual property restrictions and it encourages other sites—even “competitor” news sites—to reuse and repurpose its content.  The project represents a promising response to changing economic prospects in the news industry and facilitates more direct communication between researchers and the public.

The ratio of men to women earning undergraduate degrees in economics is three to one.  This grant funds a project by Harvard economist Claudia Goldin to try to understand why.   Over the next four years, Goldin will pursue three interconnected activities.  The first is analysis of administrative data to better understand gender differences in selecting courses and majors.  The second is convening researchers to coordinate similar research efforts by other scholars and to design interventions aimed at testing hypotheses suggested by the data.  And the third is to run a kind of “randomized controlled trial” by matching baseline economics departments with those that receive financial incentives to use an intervention.  These experiments will provide evidence about whether and to what extent departmental interventions can effectively raise the number of women who major in economics, and may suggest ways to effectively address gender imbalances in other fields.

Launched in 2008 by the National Academy of Sciences, the Science & Entertainment Exchange pairs scientists with members of the entertainment industry, giving Hollywood producers, directors, writers, and other filmmaking professionals access to scientific expertise. Through hundreds of film and TV consultations, high-profile events, and “behind-the-scenes” access to scientific venues, the Exchange has successfully worked to enhance and improve the scientific content of many Hollywood productions, from science fiction to action to dramas.  The Exchange has conducted over 800 consultations to date on blockbuster films such as Thor and The Avengers and on TV series such as The Good Wife and The Big Bang Theory. The Exchange works to ensure accuracy when science is used in film, seeds new ideas within the film and television industry, and gives professional science advice.  Funds from this grant provide operating support for The Exchange’s core activities.  Additional funds support the enhancement of The Exchange’s web presence and a planned “signature” networking event to take place in late 2014.

Funds from this grant will allow Film Independent (FIND) to host the 2014 Sloan Film Summit, a major convening of all of the Foundation’s film grantees held every three years, from film schools to film festivals, and from film development to film distribution partners. Supported activities at the summit include screenings of short films produced by Sloan-supported student filmmakers, screenplay readings, scientist-filmmaker panels on a variety of topics related to the incorporation of high-quality science into narrative film, updates on the progress of Sloan-supported projects, and networking events with industry insiders.  In addition to events for participants in the Sloan Film program, the summit will also feature three public-facing events: a full day of screenings of completed Sloan feature films followed by Q&A with the filmmakers, the staged readings of select Sloan-winning screenplays, and a high-profile “conversation” that focuses on science and storytelling.

Funds from this grant support a continuing partnership with Film Independent in its efforts to develop high-quality, science-themed screenplays and support producing teams that can get these films completed.  Grant funds will support a series of incentive awards administered by Film Independent toward this purpose, including a yearly $30,000 award to a producer to develop a science-themed script in FIND’s Producing Lab; a Sloan Fast Track Fellowship to be awarded annually to a producer or producing team and which includes a $20,000 cash grant and participation in the Fast Track film financing market; and an annual $50,000 distribution grant awarded to one exceptional science-themed film a year to incentivize buyers to acquire it for distribution.  Additional grant funds defray the administrative costs of the program and support outreach and publicity efforts aimed at promoting winning projects.

This grant provides one year of continuing support to the Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) for a series of activities designed to develop and spotlight high-quality films and film scripts that explore science as a theme or that feature scientists, mathematicians, or engineers as major characters.  Supported activities include a feature film prize for the best science-themed film submitted, a high-profile reception celebrating the winning film and filmmaker, a panel discussion featuring filmmakers and working scientists, and a screenwriting workshop to develop two science-themed scripts that will result in a staged reading of those scripts with well-known actors during the festival.  HIFF will also continue its intensive three-week filmmaking workshop at Stony Brook and will also host a tastemaker event in New York City in the weeks following the festival to promote the Sloan-winning film among prominent industry and press.

This grant provides two years of continuing support to fungal taxonomists Keith Seifert and Rob Samson for their taxonomy studies of fungi isolated from indoor dust samples from homes on six continents. Over the next two years, Seifert and Samson will complete taxonomic studies of up to 200 new species of fungi isolated from house dust, isolate xerophilic fungi from newly collected samples, and consolidate their data into an openly accessible online database.  The team will share their findings and reference materials through peer-reviewed publications, including a special issue of the leading mycology journal Studies in Mycology, presentations at scholarly meetings, and through the open access database.  At least two postdoctoral fellows, one graduate student, and four undergraduate students will be trained under the grant.

This grant provides two years of continued support for a partnership between National Opinion Research Center (NORC) and the Associated Press (AP) to marry NORC’s research expertise with AP’s media reach to create a vehicle for promoting public understanding of critical social issues. Funds from this grant will provide two years of salary support to a NORC-AP fellow who will cover the older work force beat, producing thoughtful, scientifically informed, high-quality articles on a variety of issues, including aging and work, retirement, flexible work arrangements for older workers, productivity, and the economic impact of an aging work force on businesses, pensions, and government programs like Social Security.  In addition, NORC will field a high-quality, nationally representative survey of older adults about issues facing older workers with the results distributed nationwide through the AP. Survey reporting will be supplemented with reporting on new economic research on the older work force and survey data will be made freely available to researchers in a public-use dataset.

This grant to Alicia Munnell and her colleagues at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College supports research on the aging work force through the lens of workers’ socio-economic status (SES).  Munnell and her team will launch five integrated projects related to retirement, financial security, and employment opportunities that address the following questions.   How long do people need to work to achieve a financially secure retirement? How would retirement ages vary if they reflected differential mortality by socio-economic status? How does job-changing affect the ability to retire securely? How do job opportunities narrow with age? How much would reducing the price of older workers’ labor increase their attractiveness to employers? The project promises fill significant gaps in our understanding of the older work force.

This grant to the Wikimedia Foundation provides continued administrative and operational support for Wikipedia, the fifth largest website in the world and the largest encyclopedia in history.  Over the next five years, grant funds will be used in a series of projects to bolster Wikipedia’s technical infrastructure, improve editor engagement, increase the number of women editors, increase the number of contributions via mobile devices, better integrate multimedia offerings such as video, audio, and photography into Wikipedia pages, and help Wikipedia improve and monitor article quality while moving toward self-sustainability.