This grant provides two years of continued support for a series of initiatives at the Carnegie Mellon School of Dramatic Writing to encourage its film students to write high quality, accurate screenplays about science and technology or feature scientists, engineers, or mathematicians as major characters. Funded activities include a yearly symposium for film students introducing them to internationally recognized scientists; two semesters of training in screenwriting; guest-faculty workshops by accomplished mentor screenwriters; a program pairing students with scientific advisors to ensure the accuracy of scripts’ scientific content; the presentation of two awards for the best student science-themed script; and a variety of professional development activities, including industry showcases of student work in both Los Angeles and New York.

The grant provides two years of continued support to the University of Oregon’s Biology and the Built Environment (BioBE) Center, a pioneering research center founded with Sloan support and dedicated to developing a predictive science of the built environment microbiome through partnerships between architects and biologists. Over the next two years, the BioBE Center, led by microbiologist Jessica Green, will address two primary research questions: what dispersal vectors (e.g., ventilation and human occupancy) significantly influence the microbial profile of the built environment?  And what attributes of the built environment (e.g., building materials and interior temperature) shape microbial community composition indoors?  Research will be driven by the latest advances in microbiological instrumentation and methodology, including a climate-controlled chamber, microbiome diversity mapping, high throughput sequencing and analysis, and new visualization tools.  In addition to conducting basic research and disseminating results through peer-reviewed journals and conferences, the BioBE team will be involved in educating the next generation of built environment microbiologists, training at least one undergraduate student, three graduate students, two postdoctoral fellows, and two architectural research faculty; and developing a new undergraduate course focused on the biology of the built environment.

This grant supports the expansion of a major $9 million, multi-institutional research project funded by the National Institute of Health. The NIH study aims to determine the bacterial community composition of 340 paired house dust and infant stool samples in a case cohort epidemiological study. Sloan funds will enable the research team to expand their analysis to not just bacteria, but fungi. Led Dr. Susan Lynch of the University of California, San Francisco, the research team will perform high resolution fungal community profiling of the 340 paired samples, conduct a variety of statistical analyses to determine whether relationships exist between fungal and bacterial community composition in house dust and infant stool, and use multivariate regression analysis to relate fungal/bacterial house dust microbiome composition to measure house characteristics and allergic disease outcomes to identify key factors that influence the home and infant stool microbiome and are related to human health status.

Audit/correspondence (AC) studies are the most frequently used research design for ascertaining the extent of age discrimination in hiring. This design involves submitting nearly identical resumes online to posted job openings. Resumes differ only by the age of the applicant. Discrimination is ascertained if younger applicants get more call-backs than do older ones. This methodology, however, appears likely to generate bias in favor of finding age discrimination. Because resumes give both younger and older applicants the same, low level of experience, the older applicant will appear to have “holes” in her work history that are likely to be viewed unfavorably. On the other hand, perceived (but unmeasured) differences in the human capital investment of older workers might lead employers to prefer older to younger applicants, biasing the result of audit studies in the opposite direction.This grant provides support for two field experiments by David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine aimed at increasing our understanding of the limitations of the audit/correspondence framework. The first will field an audit study where the resumes of older workers are not identical with their younger counterparts, but instead include work experience commensurate with their age. A finding that older workers are still less likely to be called for interviews may better match the legal standard for age discrimination. A second audit study will be fielded for both types of older applicants—those with equal low levels of experience like in past studies, and those with experience commensurate with age. Differential employer response to these resumes will capture differences in indicators of human capital among older workers.

This grant to The Brookings Institution funds the work of economists Gary Burtless and Bary Bosworth, who are investigating whether longer lifespans coupled with longer work lives and delayed retirement leads to greater income disparities among Americans aged 60 to 74. Burtless and Bosworth will estimate the effects of delayed retirement on the distribution of annual incomes among workers and retirees between 60 and 74; assess the effects of delayed retirement on inequality trends among individuals past age 75; estimate the effects of delayed retirement and lengthening life spans on the distribution of lifetime incomes; and offer conclusions about the public policy implications of the changing relationship among income, expected longevity, and retirement behavior.The income distribution issues cited above are particularly important as Congress considers reforms to the Social Security and Medicare systems in order to maintain their financial solvency. The tradeoff between restoring financial balance and avoiding adverse distributional effects is a key consideration in designing sensible reforms. The results from this research are essential to understanding possible adverse distributional effects.

In 1967, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) was passed by Congress with the intent to “promote employment of older persons based on their ability rather than age; to prohibit arbitrary age discrimination in employment.” While it has been viewed as successful in increasing employment rates for older workers, research suggests that older worker stereotypes and age discrimination still persist—or at least the perception of this discrimination still exists. Age-related charges of discrimination brought forward to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) have been on the increase. Whilst that may be the case, there has not been systematic examination of these charges.This grant funds work by a team led by Sarah Von Schrader of Cornell University that combines descriptive analyses with model-based approaches to better understand the phenomenon of perceived age-discrimination in the workplace. The study will look at a number of factors, including the characteristics of ADEA charges, charging parties, and employers receiving charges over time; individual and contextual factors associated with the outcomes of ADEA charges; and the characteristics of employers, along with local labor market factors, associated with ADEA charges. Von Schrader and her team will use restricted access data sets from the EEOC in conducting this research. By developing a better understanding of perceived discrimination in the workplace, it will be possible to better identify policies and practices to mitigate such discrimination.

This grant funds work by economic historian Claudia Goldin and labor economist Lawrence Katz to understand how education, employment, marriage, fertility, and health events from college to mid-life shape employment and retirement later in life among college-educated women. Goldin and Katz will study cohorts born from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s and that entered college from around 1950 to 1980. These cohorts, born up to 30 years apart, will provide sharp contrasts and differences in early, late, or no marriage; types of subjects majored in college; work patterns and whether they were intermittent or continuous; and if and when they had children. All of these factors contribute to how long college-educated women remain in the labor force and under what conditions. While existing research examines distinct cohorts of women, this will be the first study to link systematically the older, younger, and transitional cohorts.In addition to peer-reviewed articles and research papers, the project team will organize a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) conference and produce an NBER volume on women working longer.

This grant provides two years of continued support to the Science Festival Foundation for development and production of the World Science Festival, a week-long celebration of all that is fun and fascinating about science. Held each year in New York City, the Festival brings together scientific luminaries, technologists, artists, tastemakers, and the public for a series of panels, lectures, demonstrations, exhibitions, and educational events that aim to make manifest how engagement with science is as indispensable to a rich life as other cultural mainstays like music, theater, and literature. Grants funds support the production of the 2014 and 2015 World Science Festivals; additional scientific programming to be produced year-round; expanded educational programming focused on reaching students; expansion of the Festival’s web offerings to enable participation for those outside New York; and the development and implementation of a long-term sustainability plan for the Festival.

The grants supports the work of a team led by Karen Palmer at Resources for the Future to try advance our understanding of the “energy efficiency paradox”, the puzzling phenomenon of consumers failing to adopt energy efficient technologies even when they will save both energy and money over the long run. Palmer and her team will focus on two specific research questions related to how information affects consumer behavior. First, do home energy audits fill an important information gap in homeowner’s awareness of energy efficiency costs and savings? Second, how do city ordinances that require the disclosure and benchmarking of energy use by owners of commercial and multifamily residential buildings affect rents, occupancy, and landlord investments in efficiency improvements?The project will produce two rich new datasets about home energy audits.  One is a survey of 1,600 households across 23 states.  Over 500 of these households will have had an energy audit recently.  The survey instrument explores topics that existing panels do not, such as salience, defaults, and other behavioral economics considerations; time and other nonmonetary transaction costs; and tests of recommendation recall by homeowners.  The second dataset will be administrative information from audit providers describing the services, recommendations, and follow-ups provided to each of their customers.  Grants funds will support data collection, analysis, and the dissemination of findings to the academic community and the public.

This grant supports efforts by William Kerr of the Harvard Business School and Sara Turner of the University of Virginia to establish a research network focusing on advancing theoretical and empirical research on high-skilled immigration. Over the next three-and-a-half years, the new research center will convene leading experts from labor economics, international trade, industrial organization, education, and other fields; develop a compelling research agenda; and publish the results of their work. Supported activities include an ongoing series of workshops, conferences, and panels; honoraria and travel expenses for researchers; funds for data acquisition; and fellowship support for one post-doctoral and three pre-doctoral scholars.