Whether you call it machine learning, deep learning, or AI, a new set of methods at the interface of statistics and computer science are being applied to research across the sciences. A consequence of the excitement about these new methods is that disciplinary researchers eager to use them in their research must both get up to speed quickly and maintain an awareness of a new literature, one which is moving at high volume and velocity. Increased interest in the AI literature, however, comes just as that literature is getting harder to read thanks to a combination of short publish-response cycles and rapidly evolving norms about what should be cited and explained in a given paper. This grant funds a project by computer scientist Marti Hearst to develop interfaces to the AI literature that offer additional context and support for readers not deeply acquainted with the field. Hearst’s lab will develop algorithms and software to help readers see the meanings of symbols and terms anywhere in the text of a given article, regardless of where they are defined, and pull in explanations from papers in the co-citation network of the paper being read where definitions are not present in the text itself. The resulting software, implemented in a lightweight interface that integrates with PDF readers to ensure wide adoption, will be of value to researchers across the sciences who are adopting machine learning methods.

This grant supports the expansion of Dryad, a well-respected nonprofit and open source data repository that has focused on the deposit and curation of datasets in fields lacking a disciplinary data repository. Partnering with the University of California’s California Digital Library and CERN’s Zenodo repository, Dryad aims to develop a community data curation and publication platform driven by researcher needs and institutional values. The envisioned expansion will integrate Dryad with other software systems commonly used by researchers across the academic research and publication pipeline, including Jupyter, rOpenSci, DataSeer, ScholarOne, and Editorial Manager. Additional funds will support a partnership with Zenodo to integrate the two systems, supporting publishers and researchers, and allowing for triaged deposits to best practice repositories based on content type.

Funds from this grant support a major initiative by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) to increase gender inclusion and reduce sexual and gender harassment in the academic STEM research community, generally, and in the geosciences in particular. Partnering with the National Center for Professional Research Ethics (NCPRE), the AGU will expand the influential SOURCE assessment system, a series of tools and services that allow universities to assess their research ethics climates at the departmental level and to benchmark their own practices against those of their institutional peers. AGU will work with NCPRE to expand and adapt SOURCE so it can be used to effectively assess university work environments for their degree of gender inclusion and their tolerance of sexual or gender harassing behaviors. AGU and NCPRE will then work to raise awareness of the new SOURCE capabilities and to spur adoption by universities. In addition, AGU will launch several new services aimed at helping its members implement more effective anti-sexual harassment policies and inculcate more thriving cultures of gender inclusion. This will include yearly training workshops, production of a series of scenario-based web videos that provide practical training for dealing with issues of sexual harassment and gender exclusivity, and a leadership development program with an emphasis on effectively leading on ethics, diversity, and inclusion issues.

Operated by the Social Science Research Council, the Sloan Scholars Mentoring Network (SSMN) is an alumni organization for graduates of Sloan’s Minority Ph.D. program. SSMN provides networking and continued professional development opportunities for those alumni who continue to work in academia. The network also provides a means for the Foundation to follow the careers of program graduates and thus to help in assessing its impact. SSMN offerings include a directory with up-to-date information on the 1,124 graduates of the Minority Ph.D. program, a digital newsletter featuring relevant community news as well as long-form interviews and short spotlight pieces highlighting the achievements of Sloan Scholar alumni, a boot camp for early-career academics, a skill-development webinar series, a biennial leadership program for tenured alumni, and a grants program that provides travel or research funding for selected program graduates. Additional funds will support initial work exploring whether and how the network might be expanded to provide services to the roughly 40 percent of Sloan alumni who work outside academia.

According to the American Economic Association, only 15 Black Americans received a Ph.D. in economics in 2016. Of those 15, only five were women. This grant supports an effort by Spelman College to meaningfully improve those numbers through a set of interrelated initiatives designed to instill in black undergraduate women an interest in economics as a profession and prepare them to succeed in graduate study in the field. Funded activities include a summer bridge program for incoming freshmen aimed at strengthening participants’ core mathematical competencies; a distinguished speaker series featuring successful women of color who have made a career in economics; initiatives designed to improve the chances of successful application to an economics graduate program, including a journal club, GRE prep training, and a summer program that would provide economic research experience; and facilitated discussions of the challenges women and women of color face in white-male-dominated environments. The program will be supplemented with a scholarship fund that will ensure equal access to program offerings regardless of students’ economic circumstances. Grant funds will support these and associated administrative costs for three years.

This grant continues support to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for a series of initiatives that encourages student filmmakers and game designers to develop screenplays, short films, and games that feature science or technology. Grant funds support an annual colloquium that brings students together with working scientists, a yearly $30,000 production award that helps a promising science-themed film project move toward completion, three $10,000 screenplay awards given to help develop science themed scripts, and an annual Game Center award to develop an interactive game that creatively integrates gameplay with science and technology. Additional funds provide stipends for working scientists to judge student submissions on their scientific content and to serve as dedicated science advisors and mentors on student projects. Grant funds support these and related administrative and outreach activities for three years.

Funds from this grant provide support to a program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts to incentivize and encourage graduate students to write screenplays and produce short films about science and technology. Supported activities include three annual $10,000 awards given to the best student screenplay with a scientific or technological theme; two annual $21,000 production awards to help produce a science-themed film project; an annual information session and scientific panel that introduces students to cutting edge scientific research, and an intensive competitive mentorship program in which students meet regularly under the supervision of a scientific advisor as they jointly develop science-themed scripts or film projects. Grant funds support these and related administrative costs for three years.

This grant provides three years of support for the production and distribution of Science Friday, the only regular weekly show on public radio devoted to all things science. Hosted by Ira Flatow and reaching a weekly audience of some two million through radio, streaming, social media, and the web, Science Friday is a uniquely powerful platform for advancing the public understanding of science. Supported activities over the grant period include production and distribution of 150 radio segments for broadcast; 12 to 18 digital videos; 36 digital pieces in the popular SciCandy series on photography; continued production of the biweekly Science Friday newsletter, Science Diction; the hosting of three live events in the “Science Goes to the Movies” series; and continuation of the Sci Arts Book Club. Additional grant funds support outreach and engagement activities to publicize Science Friday content and broaden its audience.

This grant funds research by surface chemist Franz Geiger, Dow Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, that will investigate the fundamental chemistry of indoor surfaces. Using advanced spectroscopy, Geiger plans to expand our understanding of how indoor volatile and semivolatile organic compounds absorb from air to surfaces; how submonolayer amounts of these absorbed organic compounds convert into indoor molecular, nano-, and microlayers; the propensity of these newly formed layers to interact with oxidants; and how the dynamic response of molecular, nano-, and microlayers to gas-phase species vary with changes in relative humidity. The approach includes both mechanistic studies of idealized model surfaces as well as work on surfaces of samples derived from real-world indoor environments. Results will be shared through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at conferences and meetings.

The Modeling Consortium for the Chemistry of Indoor Environments (MOCCIE) is a multi-institutional collaboration devoted to developing comprehensive, integrated, physical-chemical models that simulate how occupants, indoor activities, and buildings influence indoor chemical processes. Founded with Sloan support in 2017, and overseen by Manabu Shiraiwa, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, and Nicola Carslaw, Reader, University of York, MOCCIE links and modifies existing chemical models across a diverse range of physical scales and timeframes. The consortium also partners with experimental chemists working on the indoor environment in mutually beneficial ways. Experimental data can be used to test MOCCIE simulations, resulting in better predictions. These improved predictions, in turn, can then be used by experimentalists to generate hypotheses for further testing. Funds from this grant provide 18 months of continued support for MOCCIE. Over that time, MOCCIE will assess gaps in the fundamental understanding of indoor chemistry processes, guide experimental measurements through identification of parameters responsible for model uncertainties, indicate key species with predicted concentrations, improve design of experimental/fieldwork studies, and aid in interpretation of data from laboratory and field experiments.