The rate of underrepresented minority (URM) doctoral production in economics is dismal: an average of only 12 doctorates per year were awarded to blacks between 2001 and 2011, down from an average of 18 per year in the preceding five years. This grant supports a pilot initiative by New York University economist Peter Henry, Dean of the Stern School of Business, to increase the number of economics doctorates awarded to underrepresented minority students though providing intensive, high-quality mentorship to promising URM students in economics.Over three years, Henry will recruit six high-achieving, high-potential students of color as they graduate from college and offer them an intensive, full-time post-baccalaureate research apprenticeship where they will take selected NYU courses and develop one or more projects chosen specifically to result in co-authoring articles with Henry. Supported students will also receive peer support and mentoring from former mentees in Henry’s program. Henry will also assess student progress and compile program documentation to share with others in the economics profession in the hopes that his program, if successful, can be replicated in other settings.

This grant provides five years of continued support to the Fund for the City of New York for the administration of the Sloan Awards for Excellence in Teaching Science and Mathematics, an annual awards program that honors exceptional math and science teaching in New York City’s public high schools. Selected by a distinguished independent committee of scientists, educators, and civic leaders, each of seven yearly awardees receive $5,000 with an additional $2,500 going to his or her school to strengthen its science and mathematics program. Grant funds support the administration of the awards, selection of candidates, press and media outreach, and an annual ceremony honoring the winners.

The DNA Learning Center, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, is the world’s largest provider of student lab instruction in molecular genetics, operating six teaching laboratories in Cold Spring Harbor, Lake Success, and Harlem. More than 265,000 precollege students have conducted hands-on experiments at DNA Learning Center locations since its first teaching lab opened, and each year about 30,000 New York area students receive science enrichment during half-day field trips, in-school visits, and week-long DNA camps administered by the Center.   The Center has also popularized several useful methods for delivering laboratory instruction in genetics to large numbers of teachers and students—including equipment-sharing consortia, mobile vans to carry instructional labs to remote sites, and laboratory field trips.This grant provides partial support for the opening of a new DNA Learning Center location in New York City. The new location will bring high-quality molecular genetics education to an estimated 45,000 New York City students annually, and will provide significant educational opportunities to low-income, minority, and underserved student populations.

This grant supports the development and organization of two four-day conferences that aim to build consensus within the social scientific community around the need for better data sharing and transparency and to investigate and discuss new approaches for doing so. Berkeley economist Edward Miguel, Director of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences, will develop and host the conferences, to be held in the summers 2014 and 2015, and will focus on developing common transparency standards for academic publishers and on training early-career social scientists in best practices when conducting empirical research. Additional grant funds support a series of small grants for innovative student demonstration projects to increase adoption of more transparent research practices.

This grant provides two years of continued support for the production and broadcast of high-quality economics, business, and financial reporting on The PBS NewsHour. Led by veteran correspondent Paul Solman, the Newshour team will produce approximately 80 five-to-ten minute video segments on economic and financial topics for broadcast, distributing them through on-air broadcast, the NewsHour website, social media, and various partnerships with partners like the Council for Economic Education and PBS Teachers. Additional original content will be produced and distributed exclusively for Web audiences, including blog posts, multimedia features, and a recurring online Q-and-A with Solman himself.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Summer Institute is arguably the most important and influential annual event for empirical economists. For three weeks, more than 2,000 economists convene to participate in at least one of more than 50 workshops covering issues in labor economics, aging, health and other traditional subjects. This grant provides three years of continued support to NBER for the administration of the Summer Institute. In addition to defraying administrative expenses, funds support special methodological lectures at the Institute, the videotaping of sessions for wider distribution, and scholarships that underwrite the participation of emerging scholars from underrepresented groups.

In 2012, New York University established the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), a new center dedicated to conducting research and education in the emerging field of urban informatics. Using vast data sets and new tools and strategies, CUSP plans to address the critical challenges facing cities, including infrastructure, technology integration, energy efficiency, transportation congestion, public safety, and public health. Funds from this grant provide support for the planning of four major CUSP projects: the Quantified Community project, which aims to fully instrument a section of the city to acquire and use the data collected by sensors as well as other data streams; the Urban Microbiome project, which aims to study the city’s microbiological ecosystems; the Urban Observatory project, which aims to develop and deploy new sensor technologies around the city; and the Data Warehouse project, which aims to construct a pioneering computing center to facilitate the storage, management, curation, analysis, and use of urban informatics data. Grant funds will support planning of these four projects, the production of white papers examining benefits, costs, and potential obstacles, and the production of a detailed project timelines, budgets, and workplans.

This grant supports the research of New York University professor Richard Revesz, who is studying the effects of the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides subsidized flood insurance to at-risk communities in exchange for implementing floodplain management ordinances that would make future construction less vulnerable to the damage caused by flooding. Revesz will investigate a series of interrelated issues, including who primarily benefits from the program, how it affects construction decisions, how to estimate costs and benefits, and what “moral hazard” or “adverse selection” problems the program creates. Particular emphasis will be based on investigating consumer, government and firm behavior in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which caused massive flooding in the New York City metropolitan area in 2012.

This grant supports a joint project by environmental engineer William Nazaroff and atmospheric chemist Allen Goldstein at the University of California, Berkeley to study chemical emissions from human occupancy in indoor spaces. Nazaroff and Goldstein will develop suitable sampling and analysis protocols for simultaneous indoor and outdoor measurements of airborne gaseous and particulate species and measure indoor and outdoor air concentrations in university classrooms, both while vacant and while occupied.  Using these measurements, they will develop models to compute emission rates for a spectrum of organic and inorganic chemicals associated with human occupancy.  The team expects to produce at least two peer-reviewed articles and will present their findings at national and international meetings.  They will also prepare a short report that outlines important research questions and obstacles to be overcome in order to advance our understanding of indoor chemistry.  Grant funds also provide support for the training of one postdoctoral fellow.

Funds from this grant support a project by Jonathan Abbatt, professor of chemistry at the University of Toronto, to conduct preliminary research on the chemistry occurring on indoor surfaces. Indoor surfaces are covered by films of semi-volatile chemical species that arise through the deposition of particulates, oils, and gas-phase oxidation products. This layer is known as the semi-volatile surface layer (SVSL). Abbatt’s research will address three fundamental issues associated with indoor SVSLs. First, what is the chemical composition of indoor SVSL’s, and how is it influenced by deposition time and location? Second, how reactive are indoor SVSL’s as a function of environmental conditions, such as relative humidity? Third, what analytical techniques are well suited for the chemical study of indoor SVSLs?Abbat will conduct studies on both model and genuine surfaces using a variety of analytical techniques including infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and Direct Analysis in Real Time–Mass Spectrometry (DART-MS), a new technology that has not yet been applied to the study of indoor chemistry.