Diamonds are the dense quintessence of carbon. Carried near the surface in eruptions of rock from the mantle from below 100 km, diamonds are scientifically significant because they prove the existence of Earth's deep carbon. They also matter because the bubbles or inclusions in them hold precious evidence about Earth at depths that are otherwise inaccessible. This grant funds an initiative led by Steven Shirey of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington to form an international group of diamond researchers that aspires to take diamond research in new directions beyond the traditional bounds of geology, physics, and chemistry. Tapping a group of more than 30 researchers from a dozen nations, the consortium aims to forge a new understanding of the conditions of diamond formation in the deep mantle, how carbon is transported and stored in the mantle now and in the past, and whether a significant reservoir of mantle carbon is primordial or recycled. Grant funds will support the development of consortium organizational infrastructure; the assembly of an internationally accessible diamond reference collection for collaborative research; outreach activities to potential partners in government, academia, and industry; and the creation of information sharing technologies to facilitate cooperation between members. The consortium has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of diamonds and the role they play in the deep mantle and to augment and inform the scientific agenda of the Deep Carbon Observatory.

This grant supports the continued development and expansion of "Software Carpentry", an initiative launched by the Mozilla Foundation to train scientists in best practices for how to use and develop software. Starting with immersive workshops, and following up with online resources and tutorials, the Software Carpentry project provides intensive, hands-on training that allows scientists to thrive in a research environment that is increasingly software-driven. Funds support Mozilla's efforts to expand the Software Carpentry program, conducting workshops and training scientists to design and lead workshops of their own. Additional funds will support the development and launch of a "Webmaking Science Lab", an online portal and set of complementary resources aimed at facilitating the open-source, collaborative, researcher-driven development of scientific software.

By the time it culminates in 2020, the Foundation expects that the Deep Carbon Observatory will involve nearly 1,000 researchers from scores of research and educational institutions, across dozens of countries, spanning a tremendous number of scientific disciplines, including geology, physics, chemistry, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and microbiology. Creating and maintaining a coherent, consistent identity for such a distributed, heterogeneous group and facilitating communications within it is crucial if the DCO is to achieve its goals quickly and efficiently. Funds from this grant support efforts by a team led by Sara Hickox at the University of Rhode Island to manage community-building, communication, education, and outreach activities for the DCO. Informed by experience managing education and outreach for the Census of Marine Life, Hickox and her team will facilitate interaction, knowledge-sharing, and coordination among DCO researchers; communicate common goals, methods, plans, and research agendas; produce educational materials; and coordinate the dissemination of DCO research to media outlets and the public.

Reproducing computational research requires more than having access to lines of code or compiled software. Reproducibility often requires running computations on an identical processor, or using a now defunct operating system. But computer hardware and software become obsolete surprisingly quickly, making the replication of old computational environments difficult or impossible. The advent of cloud computing and virtualization technology has opened a promising opportunity to address this problem. A researcher could preserve not only data and the computational algorithms used to analyze it, but the entire computational environment in which his research was conducted. Future researchers could then use virtualization to precisely replicate that environment, whatever hardware changes the future brings. The power of virtualization makes it not implausible to envision a library of virtual machines simulating every physical computer across the history of computing. This grant supports a project led by Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Mahadev Satyanarayanan and university librarian Gloriana St. Clair to build just such a library, called the "Open Virtual Machine Image Library", known as Olive. Funds will support the technical development of the OLIVE platform, initiatives to reduce the resources required to run archived virtual machines, and the development of a business plan and long-term sustainability strategy.

This grant to the American Film Institute (AFI), one of the Foundation's six film school partners, supports continued efforts to encourage the next generation of filmmakers to incorporate scientific themes and characters in their work, and to challenge stereotypes about scientists and engineers through film. AFI provides a yearly $10,000 prize awarded to the best science or technology-themed screenplay written by an AFI student; an annual $25,000 production award to a science-themed film to help defray production costs; and an annual $35,000 tuition scholarship to a filmmaker with a background in science and a passion for pursuing science-themed filmmaking as a career. Additional funds provide students with expert science to ensure the accuracy of scientific content, and a seminar series where practicing scientists discuss the latest research and discoveries and the potential they hold for narrative filmmaking.

This grant provides three years of support to the University of California, Los Angeles' School of Theater, Film and Television, one of the Foundation's six film school partners, for its continuing efforts to encourage the next generation of filmmakers to incorporate scientific themes and characters in their work, and to challenge stereotypes about scientists and engineers through film. UCLA sponsors a number of initiatives to expose film students to the narrative possibilities of exploring science and technology in their work. Grant funds support an annual, full-day colloquium brings together top UCLA science faculty from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds to lecture on interesting new developments in science and technology; two annual $10,000 screenwriting prizes to be awarded to the best science-themed scripts, an annual $30,000 directing fellowship awarded to the best science themed film project; and funds providing science mentors to ensure the accuracy of science-themed film content and to mentor students as they research and write scripts. The program promises to continue to build on the UCLA program's success in building a cadre of talented young filmmakers eager to explore scientific themes and characters in their careers.

Though studies indicate that pedagogy that incorporates "active learning" results in significantly higher student outcomes, the traditional "professors lecture, students listen" teaching format remains stubbornly predominant in STEM higher education. This grant funds a project by the Bay View Alliance (BVA), a consortium of seven large public flagship universities in the U.S. and Canada, to jointly study the features of institutional and faculty culture that inhibit the spread of new pedagogical techniques and approaches inside colleges and universities. The BVA will design, implement, and then evaluate a series of small interventions at member colleges aimed at increasing our understanding of how university administrators can best support improvements in student learning. Grant funds support the development of the administrative and organizational infrastructure necessary to manage the project; the creation of shared protocols for the conduct of research; the design, implementation and analysis of interventions; and the dissemination of results and findings.

Funds from this grant support a project by the Business-Higher Education Forum, an innovative regional partnership between industry and academia in the state of Maryland, to further develop and expand an undergraduate cybersecurity curriculum across the University of Maryland system that provides students with the skills and training sought by regional employers. A pioneering exercise in collaborative curriculum development, the project has the potential to serve as a model for how educators and private industry can effectively collaborate to maximize the value of university education for students. Funds from Sloan will support the creation of the USM Undergraduate Cybersecurity Network to coordinate curriculum, internships, advanced degrees, and job opportunities in the Washington, D.C.-Maryland region. Joint efforts will allow the collection and analysis of student academic performance, demographic, and employment data from all institutions with respect to initial enrollment, early stage persistence, transfer and articulation, declared majors, graduates, and number of job offers; data on number and involvement of industry professionals in curriculum development and internship responsibilities; and the use of the data to inform curriculum and pedagogy. It is expected that program capacity will be expanded so that 585 additional undergraduates enroll in cybersecurity programs by 2015 and 20 percent more bachelor's degrees are earned in cyber-related fields by 2018. In addition, the program will be designed with a focus on increasing the recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented minorities into the cybersecurity program.

This grant supports efforts by Jill Banfield of the University of California, Berkeley and Michael Morowitz, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center 's Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh to study how premature infants-born sterile, separated from their mothers, and isolated in neonatal intensive care units" (NICUs)-nevertheless develop intestinal microbiota necessary for normal human digestion. Preliminary studies suggest that infants acquire the needed microbes from microbes in the NICU, and Banfield, Morowitz and their team will explore that hypothesis. They will conduct comprehensive, next generation high resolution ecological surveys of hospital air and surfaces to link them with microbial colonization of the infant GI tract. The project will involve building a mathematical model for simulating microbial transport within the NICU, which will be used to interpret collected date and make predictions about the efficacy of future interventions.