This grant provides four years of renewed support to a postdoctoral fellowship program run by the National Bureau of Economic Research which supports talented young researchers interested in working on the economics of an aging workforce. Fellows receive a one-year stipend to carry out research at NBER’s office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as limited funds for research-related purposes. In addition, fellows have the opportunity to participate in NBER’s weekly lunch seminars, NBER’s Summer Institute workshops on Aging and Labor Studies, relevant activities related to the larger NIA-NBER fellows program on Aging, and collaborative research and networking activities with a similar postdoctoral fellowship program at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Selection of the three fellows per year will be made by a panel of experts who are members of both the Aging and Labor Studies NBER programs. Nicole Maestas of Harvard University will chair the selection committee, which will include leading scholars in the fields of labor economics and the economics of aging. The committee’s decisions will be based on their evaluation of the fellows’ potential to make an important contribution to the understanding of the behavior of older workers and the functioning of labor markets for these workers.

To make sound decisions about potential changes to Social Security, Medicare, and other retirement programs, policymakers need reliable, objective predictions based on the best available data on how reforms would likely affect retiree income and benefits, labor market activities, taxpayer burdens, and program costs and solvency. The predictions are often provided by DYNASIM, the Urban Institute’s well-respected microsimulation model. This grant funds a project by the Urban Institute to expand and improve the DYNASIM model. DYNASIM is a more ambitious tool than nearly every policy evaluation model in use today. It attempts to predict a wider range of outcomes than do most models developed by CBO or the analytical offices of Cabinet agencies. For example, a raise in the early and full retirement ages would almost certainly affect retirement ages, earnings, savings patterns, and the distribution of incomes of those 60 to 74 years in age. It may also influence marriage rates and living arrangements, and could indirectly affect the health status and health insurance coverage of some older Americans. Simple models often focus on just one or two of these outcomes. DYNASIM’s predictions, however, attempt to capture all these indirect effects. With this grant, the Urban Institute will develop further the predictive capabilities of DYNASIM so that the model can be used to produce credible and detailed predictions of the impact of government policy reforms that affect the nation’s elderly. The programs of interest include Social Security, including its Disability Insurance (SSDI), Medicare, tax policies that affect retirement saving, and important components of Medicaid. The grant will examine how reforms in one or more of these programs will affect old-age labor supply, the prevalence of old-age poverty, the distribution of income in old age, out-of-pocket spending on health care in old age, and tax burdens of the elderly. The DYNASIM model will also produce predictions of the effects of these policy changes on both the elderly and the nonelderly. In addition to providing for the needed improvements, the grant includes funds to maintain DYNASIM during the project period, such as by incorporating the latest economic and demographic assumptions used by Social Security and updating tax and other policy parameters. In addition, the Urban Institute team will use some funds to train additional DYNASIM analysts, to ensure the sustainability of the model, and to find ways to provide access to other researchers, so that it can continue to provide the research and policy community with the best information on the effects of retirement policy reforms after the grant period ends.

The Science and Entertainment Exchange was launched by the National Academy of Sciences in 2008 to pair members of the science community with the entertainment industry. The Exchange works to ensure accuracy when science is used in film, tries to seed new ideas within the film and television industry by exposing them to new content, and acts as a resource of professional science advice, including to Sloan’s myriad film partners. This grant funds a series of activities by the Exchange to bolster scientific representation in Hollywood films and television, increase the diversity of its science consultants, and strengthen ties with the Sloan Film program. Grant funds will support the Exchange as it provides science consultants to the film and television community and to Sloan filmmakers on some 300 television and film projects per year. Additional funds will support efforts to increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities in the Exchange’s scientist database and on efforts to include Sloan-supported filmmakers in their Exchange events and outreach.

This grant provides funds to Film Independent (FIND) to organize and host the 2017 Sloan Film Summit, the major convening of all Sloan film grantees held every three years. The summit offers a rare opportunity for interaction and networking between students, faculty, and administrators from the Foundation’s six film schools; filmmakers and staff from the five screenplay development and film festival partners; and Sloan grantees at Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI), Coolidge Corner Theatre, and the Science and Entertainment Exchange. 150 Sloan grantees are expected to attend. The three-day summit will open with a Friday night film screening on the theme of women and science, followed by an opening dinner. Saturday morning will feature Sloan award recipient updates as well as case studies with filmmakers and scientist collaborators. In the afternoon, there will be a networking lunch that connects filmmakers with scientists, followed by an industry connect program allowing filmmakers to meet with agents, casting directors, distributors, and other industry representatives. During this time, representatives from all of Sloan’s film partners will meet with Sloan program staff to share experiences and discuss best practices. Later, breakout sessions involving the latest in virtual reality will be followed by a special evening event. Sunday will open with a science and storytelling keynote from a prominent member of the film or television industry. After the keynote, there will be staged readings of excerpts from Sloan-winning screenplays for an industry audience. The summit will conclude with a showcase of Sloan-supported feature films, including one completed feature and sneak previews of upcoming features. Grant funds support administrative costs associated with hosting the event, along with associated publicity and outreach in print and social media.

This grant continues a Sloan Foundation partnership with Film Independent (FIND), producer of the Independent Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, to support filmmakers and television writers who explore scientific or technical themes in their work or create films that feature scientists, engineers, technologists, or mathematicians as major characters. The FIND program includes a host of interrelated and mutually supportive activities that promote this goal. FIND selects one producer per year to develop a science-themed script in FIND’s Producing Lab, with a $30,000 producer’s grant and a reception and promotion around this project; award one producer or producing team per year a Sloan Fast Track Fellowship with a $20,000 grant and invitation to the Fast Track film financing market; select one outstanding episodic television writer per year and award him or her with a $10,000 grant to develop a science-themed series in FIND’s new Episodic Lab; and award two distribution grants of $50,000 each to an exceptional science-themed film to incentivize buyers to acquire it for distribution. Grant funds will support these awards and associated administration and outreach costs for the next three years.

The grant provides support for an initiative by the Center for Science and Imagination at Arizona State University, partnering with MIT Press, MIT Media Lab, and Plympton Literary Studio, to create an open-access digital edition of Mary Shelley’s landmark novel Frankenstein. The digital “Living Frankenstein” edition—titled Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers and Creators of All Kinds—will present an innovative reading experience and compelling new digital content to the 21st century reader, including a podcast series, videos, and graphical interactives. It is also constructed on the software platform PubPub, developed by MIT to facilitate large-scale collaborative authorship and peer review, which will allow readers to explore multiple layers of content while annotating, commenting, and curating material that they can share with a wide community. The project tackles the novel’s age-old themes of creation and responsibility—and its contemporary relevance to artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, and more—to foster an engaged community of readers and a new interactive reading experience timed to the novel’s 200th anniversary in 2018. The digital edition will offer a unique encounter between a great literary text and contemporary issues of science and technology refracted through an interactive digital medium that seeks to transform the reading experience and advance public understanding and community engagement with science and technology.

Funds from this grant support efforts by PRX Incorporated to develop, distribute, and promote podcasts featuring high-quality scientific content or that explore scientific themes. Over the next two years, PRX plans to produce 10 episodes of the Orbital Path podcast, a new monthly program hosted by astronomer Michelle Thaller which covers astronomy, space science, and cosmology; 12 episodes of The Outside, an outdoor-focused podcast about survival science and the science of adventure; 1 science-themed episode of The Moth podcast 2 science-themed episodes of the 99% Invisible podcast 1 science-themed episode of the Theory of Everything podcast 12 episodes of Go Flight, a podcast developed in partnership with the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum 12 episodes of Sidedoor, a new podcast developed with the Smithsonian that tells stories about science, art, history, humanity and their surprising interconnections. In addition, PRX will continue to develop and promote Transistor, a broad science channel that showcases audio pieces from the open-call STEM Story Project and tests new ideas and formats from independent producers. PRX intends to use this platform to develop a new signature podcast and will launch with 18 new episodes.

The grant provides production support to filmmaker Ric Burns for a new documentary about Oliver Sacks, the celebrated neurologist, clinician, and bestselling writer who died in 2015. Upon receiving his fatal diagnosis, Sacks invited Burns to film his final days and this production will draw on some 80 hours of unique footage from the end of Sack’s life, as well as other footage covering the full arc of Sacks’ remarkable career. Foundation funding includes support for the addition of three science advisors to the project, to ensure the accuracy of the film’s portrayal of Sack’s work The finished film will have a theatrical release, a US and international film festival run, and will be broadcast on American Masters on PBS.

The Women in Energy (WIE) program is an initiative developed by the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University to provide professional development and networking opportunities to female students interested in a range of energy issues. Launched in 2015 with Sloan Foundation support, the program hosts seminars and networking events, provides mentoring, and gives summer internship stipends for students at universities both in the greater New York City region and, increasingly, the larger northeastern area of the United States. The program also connects current female students with female leaders in the energy sector from government, industry, and nonprofits. This grant provide two years of renewed support for the program.

Funds from this grant support a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary research project led by two economists at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) (Beia Spiller and Kristina Mohlin) working in collaboration with power systems engineers at MIT (Karen Tapia-Ahumada and Ashwini Bharatkumar) and regulatory analysts at New York University (Burcin Unel) to understand how alternative electricity rate designs might impact the reliability of electricity distribution grids. Many households face a fixed, per kilowatt hour rate from their utility for their electricity use—whether it is midnight in the winter (when overall demand for electricity is low) or whether it is late afternoon on a hot, sunny summer day (when demand is high). Some utilities, however, are experimenting with a host of demand-varying pricing schemes, so that consumers pay higher per kilowatt hour costs when demand is high. There are many versions of these time varying rate design schemes (real time pricing, time of use pricing, variable and critical peak pricing, etc.). By changing the economic incentives facing consumers, these policies could impact the introduction of various distributed energy resources on the grid. You may, for example, be more inclined to install solar panels on your roof to generate your own power on hot, sunny summer afternoons to avoid paying much higher electricity rates during those times. Spiller, Mohlin, and their team plan to expand existing engineering simulation models and then apply them to real world data supplied through a partnership with ComEd of Illinois. This will allow them to estimate how various dynamic pricing schemes would affect investments in solar panels and other distributed energy resources, and how the subsequent impacts such investments would have on pollution, electricity prices, and total system costs.