The social cost of carbon (SCC) is defined as the cost to society in dollars of releasing the equivalent of one ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The SCC is a key input measure to almost every legally required cost-benefit analysis of energy and environmental regulation. To properly quantify the SCC researchers need to improve the estimation of damage functions, the models that lay out how climate changes affect the economy. The Climate Impact Lab (CIL) at the University of Chicago, partnering with scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Rutgers University, is developing the next generation of climate-economic damage functions. The new functions are orders of magnitude more advanced than existing integrated assessment models, providing a spatially detailed, granular set of damage functions for over 25,000 regions globally. Grant funds will support development of the CIL model, its computing infrastructure, and salary support for one postdoctoral and two predoctoral fellows participating in the project.

This grant provides support to the Washington D.C.–based nonpartisan think tank Resources for the Future (RFF) to organize and host a conference that brings together researchers, policymakers, and various stakeholders to discuss the state of academic research about the economic, environmental, security, and policy trade-offs associated with the increased deployment of low- and no-carbon resources and technologies and to share research findings and insights on these issues developed by researchers funded through the Sloan Foundation’s Energy and Environment program. The conference will take place in late fall 2018, with nearly 100 participants drawn from academic, government, industry, and nonprofit sectors and will be structured as a series of research panels focused on topics such as energy efficiency, transportation, and transmission and distribution, which have become core areas of concentration within the Sloan Energy and Environment program. Additional thematic panels will be interspersed that advance methodological perspectives such as analyzing large-scale data sets and highlighting best practices to integrate research into decision-making. There will also be a dedicated session for students to present their work, along with a number of networking opportunities allowing participants to interact informally with one another. In addition to organizing and hosting the conference, RFF plans to record the event and potentially live-stream it. 

Funds from this grant support efforts by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to organize a series of conferences that would each showcase six papers by leading academic energy researchers that have been written for policy audiences and that are designed to address policy questions about energy or environmental policy. The conferences, held annually, will aim to strengthen relationships between academic energy researchers and their counterparts in the policy realm, with around 100 participants expected to attend each year. Following each conference, papers will be revised and published in an annual volume titled Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy. In keeping with standard NBER practice, no explicit policy recommendations will be made by research published in this project. Grant funds will support the hosting of the annual conference and publication of the associated research volume for the next three years.

Funds from this grant continue support for postdoctoral researchers studying energy, natural resource, and environmental economics at the Washington D.C.–based nonpartisan think tank Resources for the Future (RFF). Grant funds will support one, two-year postdoctoral researcher position in each of the next two years, and RFF will raise matching funds to support a second postdoctoral fellow each year. The RFF program has several important strengths. First, supported postdoctoral researchers will split their time between defined projects and independent research, allowing them the opportunity to build a strong list of publications that is vital to securing a longer-term university or other research position. Second, postdoctoral researchers will have the opportunity to build and expand their professional networks in policy, academic, and private sector circles, providing them with a broader range of subsequent career opportunities. Third, researchers will be trained in valuable skills like grant writing, public speaking, presenting material to policy audiences, and event organization, all of which will be critical for advancement in their careers. Fourth, RFF will draw on a deep roster of senior in-house scholars and its extended network of affiliated university faculty to provide job placement services and career guidance. To date, the placement record for postdoctoral researchers in this program has been strong. Fifth, there are no other federally or philanthropically funded energy and environmental economics postdoctoral researcher positions of this kind, making the RFF program unique in the field. 

There is substantial interest within the research community in studying the energy and environmental implications of the development and spread of new technologies. These technologies include digital sharing platforms like Uber and Airbnb, artificial intelligence and robotics, and distributed ledgers like Bitcoin. Questions abound. How might the use of autonomous vehicles for ride sharing affect vehicle miles traveled? What approaches might mediate the impact of blockchain energy use? Can digital ledger systems be used to track pollution effectively? This grant supports efforts by David Rejeski of the Environmental Law Institute to build a multidisciplinary research community of scholars interested in studying these topics. Funds will support 8 to 10 small research projects to study questions about the environmental and energy impacts of new technologies. Projects will be selected by an independent expert review panel through an open solicitation process. In addition to direct research support, this grant provides funds to hold two workshops—one at the project’s outset and the other at its conclusion—to bring the selected researchers together to share information about research methodologies, data sources, and potential challenges. It also funds the creation of a website to serve as a resource that will include informational bibliographies, publicly available data sources, and final research outputs.

This grant to the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering funds three-year renewals for the University Centers of Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); University of California, San Diego; and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. UCEMs are the primary funding model for the Sloan Foundation’s Minority Ph.D. (MPHD) program. NACME provides the administrative and fiscal support for management of all Sloan funding for UCEMs. Funds granted to each UCEM are used primarily for $40,000 scholarships for underrepresented minority doctoral students. Between the three schools, an estimated 61 students will receive such scholarships over the next three years, with a similar number of “matching” students receiving support from each UCEM’s host institution. Additional grant funds support programmatic expenses associated with the recruitment, retention, and mentoring of these students and activities to promote their successful completion of graduate study.

Funds from this grant provide two years of support for the continued administration of the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize, which honors the best science- or technology-themed feature film script produced by a student at one of the Foundation’s six participating film school partners: American Film Institute, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, NYU Tisch, UCLA, and USC. Each participating school submits one script for consideration each year, and nominated screenwriters are then paired with a dedicated mentor to help improve their submissions with an eye toward shepherding the script to production. An independent panel of distinguished filmmakers and scientists then selects the winning script, whose screenwriter or writers receive a $20,000 prize and a cocktail reception in their honor. They also receive support for an industry mentor to guide the project, a committed science advisor, other marketing and distribution efforts, and two professional development workshops to further develop the project.   Additional grant funds will support the pilot creation of a new $10,000 prize for the best science- or technology-themed feature film script submitted by film students drawn from one of six schools outside the Foundation’s existing group of film school partners. Schools invited to compete for this new “Sloan Discovery Prize” include Brooklyn College Feirstein School of Cinema, SUNY Purchase School of Film and Media Studies, Florida State University, San Francisco State University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and the University of Texas, Austin.

This grant provides operational and administrative support for the National Math Festival, a biannual celebration of mathematics and mathematics research held in Washington, D.C. The festival, which drew crowds in excess of 20,000 people in both 2015 and 2017, features publicly accessible lectures on mathematics, interactive exhibits about mathematical concepts, and demonstrations for adults and children of the beauty of mathematical patterns and their prevalence in virtually every facet of life. Grant funds will support production of the National Math Festival in 2019 and 2021, the fielding and analysis of attendee surveys to improve the festival’s offerings, production of a documentary about the festival, and expanded outreach through the web and social media.

This grant provides one year of support to the PBS NewsHour to continue its regular broadcast of Making Sen$e with Paul Solman, a weekly segment that explains business and economic issues clearly and engagingly to a general audience both on air and online. Grant funds support the production of 50 7-to-10-minute Making Sen$e broadcast segments on major issues facing the American and global economy, such as tax policy, health insurance, immigration, and the gig economy. Additional grant funds support increased outreach and development of the Making Sen$e website and social media presence, and the production of hundreds of original pieces of web native content, including long-form think pieces written by economists or based on Paul Solman's interviews with economists.

Modeling is essential to the development of indoor chemistry as a field. Comprehensive, integrated physical-chemical models that include a realistic representation of how buildings influence indoor processes are needed to assess gaps in our understanding, to improve experimental design, to generate hypotheses for investigation, to guide measurements, and to indicate key species to quantify and the detection limits required for quantification. The MOdelling Consortium for Chemistry of Indoor Environments (MOCCIE) consists of six teams of investigators with expertise and models in six different areas: kinetic process modeling, gas-phase chemistry modeling, molecular dynamics simulations, modeling of indoor secondary organic aerosols and organic aerosols, computational fluid dynamics modeling, and modeling surface interactions and the role of clothing and textiles. MOCCIE has determined that the best way to ensure reproducible indoor chemical science would be to strive to construct a fully integrated open source model. This requires converting each of the six existing MOCCIE models into an open source format. Funds from this grant would support a project to convert Nicola Carslaw’s gas phase chemistry model into a fully open source platform using the Python programming language. Additional funds support the construction of a new user-friendly interface to facilitate the model’s use and production of supporting documentation.   In addition to the modeling work, Carslaw will work to expand science communications about indoor chemistry by engaging a U.K.-based freelance science journalist, Nina Notman. Notman will attend indoor chemistry events and conferences, and give a plenary on science communication at the 2018 Indoor Air Conference.