This grant provides ongoing support for science and film programming and awards at the Sundance Institute, which hosts the Sundance Film Festival, the largest and most prestigious showcase of independent cinema in the United States. Sloan funds will support the Sloan Commissioning Grant; the Sloan Episodic Fellowship; the Sloan Development Fellowship; the annual Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, one of only six juried prizes at the Festival; a high-profile panel discussion with scientists and filmmakers; and a reception celebrating the Sloan-winning screenwriters and filmmakers at the Festival.

This grant provides ongoing support to the Sloan Film Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (NYU), which will develop science screenplays and produce short science or technology-themed films and games over the next three years. Grant funds will allow NYU to maintain three screenplay awards, one production award, and one gaming award each year, while providing every project with a science advisor. To increase the number of high-quality screenplay submissions during this grant cycle, NYU will select five writing finalists to receive $1,000 in the fall and will provide each finalist with support to refine their submissions from screenwriting faculty and science mentors. 

The rapid development of large electricity load sources, like data centers and industrial facilities, is increasing demand for electricity across the United States. Few entities in the energy system experience this pressure as acutely as rural electric cooperatives (co-ops), which tend to have less dense service territories with fewer ratepayers than larger investor-owned utilities or municipal utilities. However, there has been little research to date on how electricity demand growth might impact rural co-op operations.Led by scholars at North Carolina State University and the University of Minnesota, in partnership with the Smart Electric Power Alliance, this project explores the challenges and opportunities for rural co-ops as they respond to rapid electricity demand growth. First, the researchers will investigate how demand growth patterns have varied across co-op service territories over the past few decades. Second, the team will analyze the different strategies that rural co-ops have adopted in response to increased electricity demand, holding focus groups with staff from three generation and transmission co-ops to better understand how they prioritize their electricity growth management strategies. Lastly, they will examine three case studies in more detail to uncover how institutional and governance structures impact rural co-op decision-making and adoption of electricity growth management strategies. The team will produce academic scholarship along with materials designed at informing stakeholder practices and decision-making.

There have been numerous attempts in recent years to spur domestic clean energy manufacturing at both the federal and state level, including the tax incentives, place-based investments, economy-wide tariffs, and other forms of fiscal and policy interventions. A number of states have also provided targeted tax incentives and investment funds to advance clean energy manufacturing. However, researchers and policymakers still need a comprehensive analytic framework to examine how these energy policy interventions, aimed at different scales and industrial sectors, affect clean energy manufacturing dynamics.This grant will support an interdisciplinary research team with scholars from Baruch College, University of California, San Diego, Indiana University, Stony Brook University, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies to create an integrated dataset that combines information on industry investments in clean energy, state-level energy and economic development data, and trade-related information. The team will also undertake two case studies, focused on domestic solar and battery manufacturing across a broad geographic range, to understand the granular dynamics between federal, state, and local investments in clean energy manufacturing and related supply chains. Lastly, the team aims to upgrade the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) to improve how clean energy trade-related factors are represented in the model, allowing researchers to study how different policy interventions might shape future clean energy manufacturing dynamics. A workshop with key stakeholders will ensure that practitioner perspectives are integrated throughout the study.

In early 2025, the Foundation partnered with UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) and the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to support 29 Metascience & AI fellowships for postdoctoral researchers interested in understanding the implications of AI for the science and research ecosystem. As part of the fellowship, the Foundation agreed to host a summer institute to facilitate knowledge sharing, relationship building, and skill development among fellowship recipients.This grant will support that Metascience & AI summer institute, stewarded by John Basl and Katie Creel at Northeastern University. It will also support a partially overlapping nine-week program during summer 2026 in AI and Date Ethics (AIDE). Both programs will be co-located with a mentoring workshop for early-career Computer Science faculty in Trustworthy AI research organized by the Computing Research Association and Microsoft Research. Grant funds will support travel, lodging, and meals for both Metascience & AI and AIDE participants, summer stipends for AIDE fellows, and staff and speaker compensation.