This grant supports efforts by  Thomas Preston, a Professor of Chemistry and of Atmospheric & Ocean Sciences at McGill University, to study whether and how aerosol droplets accelerate chemical reactions important to the rise of life on early Earth. Professor Preston and colleagues plan to bring a new level of experimental control and chemical analysis to Origin-of-Life (OoL) droplet-chemistry studies by containing droplets in a ‘trap’ that allows individual droplets to be studied for long periods of time, and by applying two powerful spectroscopic techniques (Raman spectroscopy and mass spectrometry) to study in-droplet chemistry. In-droplet chemistry may have contributed to the rise of life on Earth by accelerating various chemical reactions. This ‘acceleration of chemistry’ is important to origins-of-life theories because as chemical reaction times increase, yields become vanishingly small, and thus not useful for understanding abiogenesis. It has been reported that confinement inside droplets can accelerate chemical reactions by a factor of up to one million, but well controlled experiments supporting such claims are rare and there is considerable uncertainty about the mechanisms responsible for any enhanced chemical reactivity. Preston and his team will use use two levitation techniques – one based on light (optical trap) and another based on an electric field (electrodynamic trap) – to study individual droplets for long periods of time (hours to days) and under  a variety of well controlled conditions, to shed light on whether and how droplet environments accelerate chemical reactivity. Factors to be controlled and studied include droplet size (and thus surface-to-volume ratio) and the impact on droplet chemistry of photoelectric and electrical field excitation. Studying droplets for relatively long periods of time will allow the team to deploy highly informative measurement techniques such as Raman spectroscopy (probes molecular bonding) and mass spectrometry (information on molecular species) and to do so in a time-resolved manner.  Two different areas of droplet chemistry will be investigated: hydrogen cyanide chemistry and phosphorylation reactions, each of which include reactions essential to origin of life studies, including amide bond formation, nucleoside formation, polysaccharide synthesis, and ion-phosphate attachment. 

Biomolecular condensates are transient organelles that are ubiquitous across life, and which are widely used -for instance- to host intracellular chemistry.  The ubiquity of transient compartmentalization hints at an evolutionarily earlier time when complex chemistry and compartmentalization coupled to evolve in tandem. This grant funds Rebecca Schulman, a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Elisa Franco, a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California Los Angeles, and Deborah Fygenson, a Professor of Physics at the University of California Santa Barbara, to conduct a series of in vitro studies to improve our understanding of systems where chemical reactions are coupled to condensation dynamics. What are the elementary components of, and the fundamental principles governing, a plausibly-origin-of-life-relevant ‘dynamic soup’ whereby chemistry and compartmentalization couple to achieve biological function? Schulman, et. al. plan to explore this question by studying how chemical reactions affect condensate (or droplet) volume and the dynamics of droplet size change.  They’ll then leverage that knowledge to achieve sustained cycles of condensate creation, growth, and dissolution over a range of spatial and temporal scales. Under project phase 1, the team will measure the phase behavior of various condensing nucleic acid (NA) polymers as a function of the concentration of several ‘effector’ molecules that are designed to modify the condensate state. The team seeks to determine the steady state properties of a condensing-molecule / effector system defined by a fixed concentration of effector molecules. Doing so will help them interpret the effects of rapid changes in, and non-uniform distributions of, effectors produced or consumed by various chemical reactions. Under phase 2, the team will explore whether it’s possible to achieve stabilized micron-scale condensates by coupling chemical reactions and condensation. The strategy relies on two key ideas. First, that the chemistry of interest should interfere with the tendency of droplet molecules to aggregate since this will inhibit the growth of an existing droplet. The PIs will exploit chemistry that produces growth inhibiting effectors (RNA polymers). Second, the growth inhibiting chemistry should become more effective with increased droplet size since this amounts to size-stabilizing negative feedback. The team will leverage in-droplet chemistry to synthesize the growth inhibiting RNA polymers and they expect that these polymers will be more effective in large droplets because it takes longer on average to diffuse out of large droplets than small droplets. Under phase 3, the researchers aim to build reaction-condensate systems that exhibit sustained cycles of droplet emergence, growth, and dissolution. The team will pursue two strategies. First, they’ll use a so-called ‘transcriptional oscillator’ positioned in the condensate environment (the surrounding dilute phase) to chemically synthesize a droplet-growth-inhibiting (RNA-based) effector. Second, they’ll implement a chemical feedback system featuring a growth inhibiting effector that does not inhibit growth until it diffuses out of a droplet and chemically reacts with certain molecules in the environmental. If successful, the project will provide insight into how cells exploit couplings between chemical and condensation dynamics to implement biological function, while also establishing a toolset that allows researchers to build information-bearing entities that exhibit sustained cycles of formation, growth, and dissolution.

Across many experimental settings, from precision medicine to science funding, different interventions may be much more effective for some individuals than others. In such cases, both researchers and decision makers would like to know more than the “average treatment effect.” Doing the most good with limited resources can also require targeting interventions toward those who will benefit from them most—if only we could identify those subgroups in advance, or, in other words, if only we could estimate “personalized treatment effects” (PTEs). Consider a school district deeply concerned about devasting learning losses during the pandemic. Preliminary studies indicate that high-dosage tutoring (HDT) is a costly but highly effective form of small group instruction that can help teachers double or triple mathematics learning each year. Another effective yet lower-cost option is to replace some in-person instruction with time on a high-quality computer-assisted-learning platform. This treatment is called “sustainable high-dosage tutoring” (SHDT). On average, students seem to benefit from SHDT as much as HDT. The problem is that certain students hardly benefit from the technology-assisted component at all, and thus should be treated with the more expensive high-dosage tutoring. Personalized treatment effect estimation allows the school district to identify these students. Jens Ludwig at the University of Chicago seeks to advance the estimation of PTEs when data is obtained from large-scale field experiments. His approach builds on fundamental techniques developed by Sloan grantee Susan Athey, whose “random forest” algorithm carries out machine learning by exploring many different “decision trees.” Ludwig will extend these methods, leveraging recent experimental data involving eight U.S. school districts where a total of 20,000 students were randomly assigned to a control group, to high-dosage tutoring (HDT), or to sustainable high-dosage tutoring (SHDT). Ludwig’s team will develop PTE estimation methods for identifying which of the variables observable in advance best predict how students vary in their treatment response to HDT and SHDT. They will devise and test practical rules for helping schools assign different types of students to HDT or SHDT based on these individual characteristics. This personalized approach has the potential to maximize learning gains and optimize resource allocation, offering a cost-effective solution to reversing pandemic learning loss in STEM education and allowing the same tutoring program budget to benefit a greater number of students The project will also produce a practical guide for researchers on PTE estimation methods, helping to ensure robust application of this methodology across other contexts outside of STEM education.

Private equity (PE) firms buy companies they can reconfigure and then sell at a profit. Across various sectors, some of these firms have a reputation for saddling the businesses they purchase with debt, replacing management, prioritizing short-term value over long-run sustainability, and then flipping what is left as soon as they can. In the U.S. childcare market, PE firms now own nine of the 11 largest for-profit chains. These have done quite well financially even as smaller community-based childcare providers have struggled in the wake of COVID-19. New research documenting higher mortality rates and lower care quality in PE-owned nursing homes raises concerns about what might be in store for the even more lightly regulated market for childcare. On the one hand, PE investment could increase quality and maintain reasonable prices that attract consumers and enhance profitability. Or PE may result in rising prices, quality reductions, and steep charges for the privilege of being managed by the firm. Without good data on childcare markets, most public discourse is based on anecdotes and speculation. Chris Herbst (Arizona State University) and Jessica Brown (University of South Carolina) will compile new data and conduct four academic studies analyzing PE’s impact on the market for childcare. Their first paper will identify PE-owned childcare facilities using business registry data and document how they compare to non-PE-owned centers. The second will examine what happens to individual enterprises after they are acquired by PE in terms of prices, wages, employment, and performance on state inspections. Using structural estimation methods, the third and fourth papers will explore how PE entry affects both local childcare centers not owned by PE as well as public early education providers like Head Start. By demonstrating the utility of new data and methods, this work will jumpstart the conversation about childcare management in academic circles and inspire other researchers to begin work on this topic as well.

This grant provides three years of continuing support for a program at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinematic Arts to award production, screenwriting, and animation awards to student filmmakers who explore scientific and technological themes and characters. USC will make two production awards, two screenwriting awards, and one animation award annually to student filmmakers each year for a total of 15 awards over three years. The screenwriting award is offered to exceptional feature-length or episodic television scripts that accurately depict scientific stories or themes. The production award provides funds to produce a short film that centers science and technology themes or characters. The animation award supports the development and production of animated short films with science and technology themes. Grant funding also includes support for annual “Sloan Evenings,” which involve screenings of completed student Sloan films followed by discussions with scientists and filmmakers, and annual science seminars, which brings in scientists to talk to students about recent scientific studies, findings, controversies, discoveries, and other events that may inform and inspire filmmakers to further explore science as a theme in their filmmaking.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) are among the largest investments ever made by the federal government to accelerate the decarbonization of the U.S. economy. These Acts provide multiple incentives to spur clean energy innovation—including tax credits, subsidies, and new grant funding—to a host of different actors within the economy, from companies and universities to states and local communities. There is considerable interest and value in understanding the impact of these interventions and incentives on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, on the creation of new clean energy technologies, on the generation of jobs within the clean energy economy, and on whether and to what extent funding benefits are flowing to disadvantaged. This grant provides funding for an ongoing project by Resources for the Future (RFF) to partner with federal agencies to evaluate the impact of energy policies and programs. Grant funds will support two prongs of work by RFF. The first is establishing a hub for energy policy evaluation research by holding an open Request for Proposals to broadly source and support research projects across the academic landscape. Resources will be provided to fund between 4-8 research projects at up to $100,000,000 each to begin evaluating different elements of the IRA's impact on the energy system. Grant support will cover expenses such as faculty research time, student stipends, data access, and travel to interact with federal agencies. RFF will convene funded research teams to share progress mid-way through the project and then at the end to share results with decision makers. The second prong will be developing an evaluation system to assess the impact of specific DOE funding programs. RFF will first conduct interviews to identify what can be learned about how program evaluation operates at other relevant agencies and inventory what evaluation efforts are currently taking place at DOE. Two candidate partners include the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.  This project is expected to result in a series of research papers, reports, policy briefs, and other publicly available outputs that will substantially advance the state of knowledge about contemporary clean energy policy and program evaluation.

Graphite is a key element used in clean energy technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries and solar panels, but as of now it is completely imported into the United States, predominantly from China. Though the United States has insufficient deposits of natural graphite to meet the growing demand for its use, synthetic graphite could serve as a more sustainable source of production. One challenge is that synthetic graphite production currently relies on fossil fuel-based feedstocks, but recent advancements in production using waste biomass or plastics waste have made "green" synthetic graphite a more appealing and plausible option for building domestic supply capacity. Leveraging a combination of multiple modeling strategies, this proposal aims to evaluate the environmental, economic, and equity implications of a developing green graphite supply chain in the US. The proposed work will compare two main potential feedstocks for synthetic graphite: biochar, a carbon-rich material typically derived from partially combusted biomass, like agricultural residues or industrial paper sludge, and plastics waste. The team will use information gleaned from literature review, geospatial analysis, and material flow analysis (MFA) to characterize the current domestic availability and flows of these source materials. They will then use life cycle assessment (LCA) and technoeconomic assessment (TEA) to evaluate the environmental and economic impacts of green graphite production processes that use these feedstocks. Finally, they will undertake regulatory analysis that will help provide policy recommendations for facilitating sustainable and equitable development of these supply chains. Sloan funds will primarily go towards faculty and student support, including support for one postdoctoral fellow and one graduate student researcher to contribute to the effort. The team will use additional funds from Yale University to hire additional graduate student researchers. Outputs are expected to include academic journal articles, conference presentations, and a project website to share key findings and resources. To broadly disseminate their findings, the team will also host a series of public webinars and a research symposium to help share results with a diverse range of stakeholders.

As electric vehicle (EV) demand and manufacturing increase, companies must secure additional critical minerals and metals (CMM) for use in their batteries, creating new connections between EV automakers, mining companies, and local communities where CMMs are produced. Yet few studies examine the interaction between EV manufacturers, mineral production, and community impacts. This grant funds research that will take a dual-pronged approach to better understanding these emerging dynamics. First, the team will undertake 5-7 case studies of EV automakers to understand how these companies are responding to the reshoring of critical mineral development. The focus of these case studies will center on whether and how EV manufacturers plan to secure their own sources of mineral production. The team will then use these case studies to inform different modeling scenarios, called Mine Expansion Pathways, which visualize where and how the domestic mining industry might develop over the next 50 years to meet critical mineral demand for EV batteries. These Mine Expansion Pathways will identify when and where new mines might arise, which projects might be prioritized over others based on industry needs, and which surrounding communities could be affected. To model these alternatives, the team will combine a fleet turnover model, which forecasts future EV purchases and demand, with geospatial modeling to study the physical distribution of current and future CMM mines. The idea is that the qualitative interviews and quantitative scenario modeling efforts will build on one another: initial interviews will help provide realistic considerations for the modeling effort, which will in turn illuminate potential economic, equity, and sustainability trade-offs that can be used to inform future interviews about long-term strategic decision-making approaches within these firms. Together, this interdisciplinary approach will provide new insights into the dynamics between EV manufacturer demand for critical minerals, mining expansion, and community perspectives, and the results are expected to inform evolving economic and policy discussions.  Outputs for the work will include academic journal articles geared towards both energy engineering and business management fields, as well as shorter briefs summarizing case study findings for industry partners and managers. The team will publish their Mine Expansion Pathway scenarios in an online, interactive tool and disseminate their findings to decision-makers, through public interest articles, and via presentations at the Erb Institute’s Michigan Business Sustainability Roundtable.

Much of the research on the impacts of critical minerals and metals (CMM) tends to focus on the upstream portion of the supply chain—the mines themselves—and explores how impacts at this stage can cascade down through the energy system. Less frequently does research take the reverse view, examining how changes in end-user behavior might percolate upstream to impact CMM production and demand. This project aims to do just that by investigating how a shift towards electrified public transit might impact critical mineral development. The proposed project will assess the environmental, equity, and policy impacts of public transit electrification by conducting social life cycle assessments (SLCAs) for two high-traffic case study cities: Los Angeles, CA and Atlanta, GA. For each city, the team will model alternative scenarios that feature different levels of personal and public electric vehicle adoption to evaluate the energy, environmental, and social impacts inherent in the SLCA framework. In addition to the expected SLCA results, the team plans to produce two particular metrics. The first is what is called an avoided critical mineral extraction index – a measure of how much critical mineral demand is reduced in each scenario associated with increased utilization of electrified public transit. The second is a combined lifecycle emissions metric, which will combine and compare measurements of upstream emissions from mining and battery production with downstream, on-road emissions. SLCA results will be paired with policy analysis to identify legal barriers and opportunities for adoption of electrified and multimodal transportation systems in the two regions to be studied. This proposed scholarship will be rooted in substantial community engagement and partnership activities. The team will work closely with multiple community-based organizations in Atlanta and Los Angeles: EVNOIRE, a non-profit organization focused on electric mobility with offices in both Los Angeles and Atlanta; Clean Cities Georgia, an Atlanta-based non-profit working to advance clean and sustainable transportation solutions; and Integrated Solutions, an Atlanta-based consultancy focused on diversity and inclusion that has expertise in conducting and organizing community engagement processes. In addition to academic journal articles and policy briefs, the team will present their findings to transportation agencies in Los Angeles and Atlanta.

A number of mining companies have proposed establishing vertically integrated operations that combine mining and refining phases. Researchers hope that such integrated supply chains will be more environmentally friendly, and acceptable to residents living near proposed mine sites. While much attention is often placed on examining the expansion of such mining in the United States, the subsequent refining component—the steps where the raw materials are transformed into usable intermediate and final products—is an often-overlooked dimension of the supply chain. This project will investigate the social and technical factors that impact the development of vertically integrated mine-refinery projects and examine how they might impact local communities and Indigenous populations. It will focus on studying vertically integrated projects for nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) refining, which are commonly mined together and are used in clean energy technologies like lithium-ion batteries. There are several planned projects to build out this refining capacity in the years ahead, many of which are expected to be located near Indigenous lands. This proposed effort will provide critical insights to understand the potential role of these refineries in supporting the equitable buildout of domestic Ni and Co production capacity. This is an interdisciplinary collaboration between faculty at the Colorado School of Mines and Fort Lewis College, a Native-American Serving Non-Tribal Institution, located in Durango, CO. In addition to academic research outputs, the team will broadly disseminate research findings through presentations at the Colorado School of Mines Payne Institute for Public Policy's annual Critical Minerals Symposium and through a Symposium on Indigenous Communities and Energy Transitions to be held at Fort Lewis College.