Funds from this grant support two programs at the City University of New York aimed at supporting faculty and students in STEM disciplines. The first, CUNY's Summer Research Program, provides interested undergraduates with the opportunity to engage in hands-on, in-the-lab science, assisting CUNY science faculty with ongoing research projects during the summer. Grant funds will support 10 students in each of 2012, 2013, and 2014, providing a housing allowance and a living stipend. The second supported program under this grant is CUNY's Junior Faculty Fellowship Program, which aims to support promising early-career STEM faculty at CUNY by providing a $50,000 fellowship for use in research. Over the course of the next three years, eight faculty will receive fellowships through this grant.

This grant provides funds for a project by George Mason University to facilitate use of District Builder, a free, open-source software platform that allows citizens to draw, share, and submit their own congressional redistricting maps, in New York State. Partnering with New York's Fordham University, the George Mason team will further develop and improve the District Builder platform, populate it with relevant demographic and legal data specific to New York, launch and maintain a public website to host the District Builder platform aimed at New York residents, and engage in a series of educational and outreach initiatives, including a Fordham-sponsored competition that will encourage students to submit redistricting maps drawn using District Builder and have their submissions ranked against a set of objective, measurable criteria, with the winning map to be submitted to the New York State legislature for consideration in its redistricting decisions.