Funds from this grant provide operational support for the launch of the New York Genome Center, a pioneering New York City-based research facility that will conduct both its own genomic research as well as provide genetic sequencing, analysis, and other services to research institutions in the New York metropolitan area. A model in collaborative research, the center will allow participating institutions to have access to first class genomic analysis capabilities without having to buy and maintain their own equipment, rent lab space, and retain expensive staff. Eleven of the City's most prominent research institutions have signed on to the effort, including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Columbia, Cornell, and NYU; and Memorial Sloan Kettering, New York Presbyterian, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine among others. The development of a major new research center promises to catapult New York into the center of the dynamic and rapidly growing field of genomics.

This grant provides three years of support for the continued operation of the Sloan Public Service Awards. Administered by the Fund for the City of New York since 1973 and supported by the Sloan Foundation since 1985, these annual awards honor exceptional civil servants working in New York City municipal government. Each of the six yearly winners receive a $10,000 award and is honored both in a ceremony at his or her workplace and in a city-wide celebration presided over by the Mayor. Grant funds will support the administrative costs of the program for three years, including the selection process, nominee vetting, press outreach, event planning, and award monies.

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.

Funds from this grant support a team at the Dolan DNA Learning Center (DNALC) of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to conduct a pilot program-called DNA Barcode New York City (DNAbcNYC)-to bring DNA barcoding to New York City high school students through DNALC's facility in East Harlem. The DNALC-started in 1988-is the world's first science center devoted entirely to genetics education. The DNAbcNYC team plans a pilot program to get New York City high school students-especially those underrepresented in science-to use DNA barcoding to explore their urban environment. They plan to organize student work around several key campaigns that encourage a coordinated effort to sample the biodiversity of urban ecosystems around the city, including city parks and gardens, neighborhood markets, and detecting food fraud. The project includes support for teacher training in DNA barcoding, student teams, a dedicated DNAbcNYC micro-site, kits and supplies, assistance for in-school DNA barcoding "footlocker kits," and a new Urban Barcode Competition. Using methods established by DNALC, the students will collect samples, extract DNA, and then amplify it using the appropriate primers (CO1 for animals, rbcL for plants). The amplified DNA will be shipped to a vetted sequencing lab, where the barcode sequence will be determined. The sequences will be uploaded to a new dedicated DNAbcNYC micro-site where the sequence data can be accessed and analyzed. The micro-site will support all phases of the DNAbcNYC project. The site will include video instructions, online lab notebook, downloadable lab protocols, teacher preparation, multimedia resources, a barcode sequence database, and a suite of simplified bioinformatics tools. Novel sequences will be submitted to the Barcode of Life database. The teachers and students will be invited to participate in the Urban Barcode Competition. The top three teams will be awarded cash prizes. In addition, the top three projects will be subjects of videos posted on DNAbcNYC's micro-site as well as on Cablevision's MSG Varsity Channel. The DNAbcNYC expects to reach at least 300 students in this pilot, assuming each trained teacher engages one team of three students. The project represents a unique opportunity to bring the excitement of scientific discovery through DNA barcoding to New York City high school students.

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) is a world leader in the use of electronic data for disease surveillance. The syndromic surveillance systems maintained by the Bureau of Communicable Disease process nearly four million emergency department encounters, 1.5 million calls for emergency medical service ambulance dispatch, 14 million pharmacy transactions, and over one million school health nurse visits annually. Sloan provided early support in 2002 ($700,000) and 2003 ($697,000) to the New York Academy of Medicine to help the NYC Department of Health to develop and disseminate the SATSCAN syndromic surveillance software which was very successful. Since that time, new tools and methods applicable to syndromic surveillance have been developed elsewhere, and NYC DOHMH would like to put them into practice. Funds from this grant will allow NYC DOHMH to make their system "state of the art", share their improvements with other public health departments across the country, and expand the applicability of electronic data for disease surveillance by incorporating novel statistical approaches and additional data streams for outbreak and cluster detection. Over the next three years, the NYC DOHMH team will conduct three main activities. First, they will review the literature of recent research and syndromic applications in other local jurisdictions. Second, they will analyze and evaluate select statistical methodologies that can be applied to existing data to determine if they prove more useful and informative for disease surveillance. Third, they plan to apply selected methodologies to everyday practice and prepare a user's guide-a basic how-to guide-that includes their code and examples of data visualizations.