This grant funds a collaboration between University of California, Davis energy economists James Bushnell and David Rapson and distribution systems engineer, Duncan Callaway of the University of California at Berkeley. The group plans to study how the rise of distributed energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar panels and electric vehicles impact power quality and distribution system performance in California. Working with utilities (such as Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Company) and state government regulators (including the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Air Resources Board), Bushnell and his colleagues will collect and combine data on solar photovoltaic installations and electric vehicle registrations and then map them to individual circuits in the California electricity distribution grid. This will allow the team to analyze in fine-grained detail how increases in solar photovoltaic installations and electric vehicles are likely to strain elements of the California electricity distribution system. The team will then investigate how the performance of distribution systems maps to various socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of California residents.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) employs a substantial number of postbaccalaureate and postdoctoral scientists and economists. These positions train scholars how to undertake policy-relevant science and economics research in an applied setting, outside the university. This grant provides support to EDF to develop a more formalized training, networking, and mentoring program that will train 25 to 30 early-career researchers in the ancillary skills needed to succeed in applied research environments. Training will cover such topics as communications, proposal writing, program management, and team leadership. EDF will also organize a series of workshops that separately target postbaccalaureates and postdoctoral researchers to reflect the different skill development needs among these two groups and will implement a formal mentoring system that will link their postdoctoral fellows with senior scholars across the institution. Finally, EDF’s in-house social scientists will implement a series of surveys among participants to track the impact of this program over time.

Since 2001, the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) has served as the sole administrative manager for the Foundation’s graduate scholarship programs for underrepresented minorities, the Minority Ph.D. program (MPHD) and the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP). NACME verifies student eligibility, disburses scholarship funds, and tracks student progress. This grant continues support for these and other activities for another three years. In addition to these activities, over the next three years NACME Vice President Christopher Smith and Program Manager Denise Ellis plan to launch several new initiatives related to Sloan fellowship programs, including community building among campuses participating in the MPHD and SIGP, financial analysis of scholarship funds, and reporting on the academic progress of scholarship recipients. In addition, they will begin to administer surveys to supported students both as they join the program and at graduation.

Led by Peter Henry at New York University’s Stern School of Business, the Ph.D. Excellence Initiative (PHDEI) seeks out promising students of color who recently graduated with a baccalaureate degree in economics and offers them high quality coursework, training, and research experience designed to make them very competitive candidates for admission to top economics graduate programs. Incoming PHDEI students take two courses per semester (tuition is covered by NYU), and receive mentoring and research experience through Henry and participating economics faculty at NYU and other institutions. Grant funds support the administration of the program for four years, along with associated outreach, communications, and evaluation activities. Additional funds support an annual summer conference at which current and former research assistants and PHDEI fellows, joined by supportive faculty mentors, will present their research.

Funds from this grant support efforts by Manabu Shiraiwa, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, in collaboration with Nicola Carslaw at the University of York, to develop and lead an indoor chemistry modeling consortium. This two-year project will bring together experts from several different fields to begin to develop a model that realistically represents how buildings influence indoor chemical processes. The team will begin to find ways to link six different modeling techniques that deal with different aspects of indoor chemistry on scales ranging from micro- to macroscale and from very short (less than 1 second) to much longer lifetimes. The modeling consortium plans to address the following research questions: (1) Can we understand indoor chemistry well enough to predict it quantitatively with computer models of chemical and physical processes? (2) What are the major uncertainties that currently exist in these models? (3) What experiments/field measurements do we need to improve our models? (4) What experiments/field measurements do we need to evaluate our models? Models will be developed within the framework of exploring two relevant and highly topical research themes for indoor air chemistry: (1) reactions between indoor oxidants and human skin and (2) cleaning-related emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The research team will also conduct three workshops—at the beginning, middle, and end of the project—to foster collaboration and communication as well as to provide in-person opportunities to review work plans and progress. Six early-career researchers will be trained. The new knowledge and modeling tools will be shared in peer-reviewed publications as well as through presentations at conferences, such as Indoor Air 2018 and the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) meeting.

This grant, to Barbara Turpin, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will fund three-year effort to examine the roles of dampness, water-soluble organic gases (WSOGs), and surface chemistry on indoor air composition. The project is designed to improve characterization of indoor WSOGs, their chemistry and fate indoors, and to provide key information needed to predict the degree to which water in damp homes may alter indoor air composition. The research will address the following questions by conducting controlled experiments with real indoor surfaces at high vs. low relative humidity: What is the uptake rate and equilibrium partitioning of WSOGs on typical indoor surfaces? How much liquid water absorbs on these surfaces and how does liquid water mediate uptake? The research will also provide insights into surface chemistry and product formation in damp homes by measuring real-time chemical changes on indoor surfaces after the introduction of key gases (ozone, water vapor, and WSOGs) using sophisticated state-of-the-art spectroscopic techniques. Finally, the UNC team will pilot real-time molecular-level characterization of WSOGs in one to three homes using high-resolution time-of-flight chemical ionization mass spectrometry (HR-ToF-CIMS) over 15 days. The project will create new knowledge about the roles of dampness, water-soluble organic gases, and surface chemistry on indoor air composition. The research findings will be shared through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national and international conferences.

This grant funds a research project by atmospheric photochemist D. James Donaldson, professor at the University of Toronto, and Christian George, a senior scientist at France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Lyon, France to investigate the role of photochemistry indoors. The team plans to establish whether heterogeneous (gas/surface) photochemical reactions occur indoors, producing gas phase oxidants and their precursors, as well as particles. The team plans to address three main questions: (1) Are indoor surfaces of occupied spaces photochemically active in the formation of gas phase oxidants? (2) If so, how do local variables (temperature, relative humidity, specifics of illumination) affect the formation of gas phase oxidants? (3) Is heterogeneous photochemistry a source of indoor particulate matter? These questions will be addressed through a series of laboratory and chamber experiments in both laboratories in Toronto, Canada, and Lyon, France. To facilitate the long-distance collaboration, the team will conduct a series of two-way student exchanges, as well as annual meetings between the principal investigators in Toronto and Lyon. This exchange of students will encourage and support strong international scientific ties at all levels, allowing students to experience different societies and laboratory structures, and better preparing them for transnational activities in the future. This project promises to provide new knowledge about indoor photochemistry. The results will be shared through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at conferences and meetings. At least three undergraduate students, three graduate students, and two postdoctoral fellows will be trained.