This proposed grant will provide partial funding for four Ph.D. students per year for two years (eight total) to conduct research on energy data analytics at Duke University’s Energy Data Analytics Lab (EDAL). Candidates will be drawn from a range of natural and social science disciplines—economics, engineering, environmental science, computer science, statistics, mathematics—and will be required to have faculty supervisors drawn from both energy-related domains and data-science relevant disciplines. Each pre-doctoral fellow will be expected to produce at least one paper that emerges from their fellowship research. All datasets produced will be made available through the EDAL repository. Fellows will has access to EDAL’s high performance computing environments and have the opportunity to lead an undergraduate energy data science team over a summer term. An Energy Data Analytics Symposium will be held at the end of the grant period to feature student work and that of invited internal and external senior scholars.

Among the most critical, unanswered research questions in energy and environmental policy is determining the economic impact of carbon dioxide emissions on society. This measure, the social cost of carbon (SCC), is defined as the dollar value cost to society of emitting one ton of carbon dioxide (or carbon dioxide equivalent gas) into the atmosphere. Estimating the SCC is necessary for conducting cost-benefit analyses of more than 150 federal laws and regulations in the United States. This grant to Resources for the Future (RFF) provides partial support for a large scale initiative that would develop an improved computational platform for estimating the SCC. RFF plans to put in place an integrated, modular framework that disaggregates the SCC estimation process into four distinct modules: socioeconomics, climate, damages, and discounting. Doing so will allow the best natural and social science research in each area to inform projections and estimations on each topic. These modules will then be linked together through an open source, computationally efficient, publicly accessible, and fully documented platform. This approach will help economists and climate scientists better compare similarities and differences among the three major integrated climate assessment models that underpin the SCC.

This grant to the Council on Library and Information Resources funds a fellowship program for four, two-year postdocs interested in working at the intersection of energy economics and data science. As large, complex datasets on energy production, transportation, and use become increasingly available, demand has emerged for a new type of scholar with one foot firmly in energy economics—the data it uses, the questions it asks, the methodologies it deploys—and one foot in data science. These fellowships aim to fill some of that need by creating postdoctoral positions that provide such training. Supported fellows will work on a diverse array of projects such as energy data visualization, integrating multiple datasets, and establishing university-wide energy data storage and access platforms. Fellows will be placed at four energy research centers that are existing grantees in the Foundation’s Energy and Environment program: University of California Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas, the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, Duke University’s Energy Data Analytics Lab, and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Fellows will be selected in close cooperation with researchers at each institute, ensuring that candidates have both the skills and research interests each institute needs. As a signal of demand for the fellows, participating Centers have agreed to cover 50% of each fellow’s stipend and benefits costs. The fellowship program will be administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources, which has experience running several successful fellowship programs and has well-established recruitment, selection, mentoring, and professional development processes, including annual network-building workshops and the provision of micro-grants to selected fellows for collaborative projects.

This award provides for the establishment of a new University Center of Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM) to be hosted at Duke University. The heart of the Foundation’s longstanding Minority PhD program, UCEMs are campus-based initiatives that provide scholarships, faculty and peer mentoring, professional development activities, and seminars and other resources aimed at promoting underrepresented minority students’ (URMs’) successful completion of graduate study. The Duke University UCEM will encompass nine science and engineering departments: chemistry, computer science, mathematics, physics, statistical science, biomedical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering and materials science. Over the three-year grant period, 30 minority graduate students will be supported with $40,000 awards over and above their standard graduate student support packages, half from Sloan grant funds and half from Duke matching funds. In addition, UCEM faculty and administrators will enhance and expand their minority outreach, aiming for a 20% increase in URM applications and at least a 10% increase in URM matriculants to the UCEM-participating programs over the life of the grant. Other funded activities include a coordinated set of professional development and support activities for supported students, including mentorship, seminars, and networking opportunities.

This grant funds a pilot project at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) that will leverage the insights and infrastructure of the university’s successful Meyerhoff Scholars program to identify talented minority undergraduates with an interest in pursuing advanced degrees in economics and provide them with high quality mentoring and training that will help prepare them for success in top flight graduate programs. Funded activities include: Hosting of several workshops per year to inform students early in their college years about career opportunities available to economics PhDs; Creation of faculty working groups in economics, math, and other STEM fields to examine how undergraduate course pathways influence the potential for doctoral work in economics; Provision of advising, mentoring, group support, and financial support for interested students; Offering of summer research experiences to 15 undergraduates over five years at either UMBC or at one of several other approved research universities or institutes; and The award of five stipends to UMBC graduates for two-year research assistantships in Sloan-approved economics-focused post-baccalaureate programs.

This grant provides partial support for a two-year initiative by the National Academies’ Board on Higher Education and Workforce to produce a thoroughly-researched consensus study on effective mentoring practices and the role these practices play in improving student persistence and expanding diversity and inclusion. Examining both undergraduate and graduate mentoring programs, the study aims to identify areas for future empirical research and to evaluate the impact of varied mentoring programs in STEMM (STEM+Medicine). A parallel effort will develop an online, interactive resource guide so that institutions, departments, individual faculty, and student development professionals will be able to access fully-vetted materials and resources on mentoring and customize them for their own use. Plans are to convene a study committee of 8-12 members; hold two-to-four in-person committee meetings and four-to-five virtual committee meetings; complete a critical review of the literature; organize workshops and stakeholder engagement activities; publish the committee report; develop, test, and launch the interactive online resource; and assess the project’s uptake and impact.

This grant provides 40 months of continued funding for the MSRI Undergraduate Program (MSRI-UP) at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. The MSRI-UP program includes (1) an annual six-week summer research experience for 18 undergraduate mathematics students from underrepresented groups working in research teams of three, (2) colloquia and professional development workshops, (3) presentations at national math conferences following the summer program, (4) an introduction to a wide community of peers and mentors, and (5) long-term follow-up and mentorship. The research efforts of participants will result in technical reports posted on MSRI’s website, oral presentations at a culminating symposium, and presentations at various national conferences. Of former MSRI-UP participants with bachelor’s degrees, 82% have continued into graduate programs, including 70% in doctoral programs. Though the program was only started in 2007, 45 alumni have gone on to earn MS degrees and 20 have completed PhDs. These achievements are especially noteworthy given the program’s focus on recruiting underserved students who are not clearly headed for a graduate program in mathematics and who are not high GPA students from elite high schools.

Founded by civic technologist Noel Hidalgo, BetaNYC is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping key New York City constituencies take advantage of already-accessible open civic data. Hidalgo has identified New York’s borough president offices and community boards as particularly promising sites of leverage where better access to civic data could be of direct and immediate value to local governance, and where better technical literacy and capacity could tangibly improve New Yorkers’ experience of government. Among its programs, BetaNYC runs a Community Information Fellowship that places CUNY undergraduates in the Manhattan Borough President’s office, where they identify and work to fill gaps in technical expertise at the community board. This grant would build on that program to pilot a “Civic Innovation Lab” in the Borough President’s office that will build prototype solutions to data problems identified by these fellows. The grant is being made to the Fund for the City of New York, a not-for-profit that provides fiscal sponsorship and administrative support to charitable efforts aimed at benefiting the City and its residents.

The $500,000 grant to MIT will establish the Paul L. Joskow Fellowship Fund (the “Fund”) in honor of Paul L. Joskow, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 2008 through 2017. MIT will hold the grant as an endowment, allowing donors and others to add to the Fund at any time through gifts, donations, and distributions from trusts, estates, or other entities. MIT will use Fund income to provide financial support, including fellowship support, to graduate students studying energy economics, environmental economics, and industrial organization, in accordance with MIT graduate student financial assistance policies and procedures. Support may include funds for the acquisition of research data, for travel to professional meetings, and for other research-related outlays by the students. Recipients of fellowship assistance from the Fund shall be known as Paul L. Joskow Fellows. This grant was made on the occasion of Dr. Joskow’s retirement as President of the Sloan Foundation and in tribute to his decade of service to the Foundation and its mission.

This grant continues a Sloan partnership with the Sundance Film Institute for a series of initiatives that promote the development, production, and distribution of science-themed films. Annual initiatives include The Sloan Commissioning Grant, which is awarded to a screenwriter or producer with an early-stage science-themed project to support its development. The award includes a cash grant; a stipend for a science advisor and research; mentorship; and year?round staff support from Sundance. The Sloan Lab Fellowship in the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program, which supports the participation of a filmmaker and his or her science-themed script in the Screenwriters Lab, Screenwriters Intensive, or Creative Producing Summit; Winners participate in the Feature Film Fellows Track at the Sundance Film Festival and are eligible for additional Feature Film Program Labs. The fellowship also includes a grant to support the development of the project, including funds for science research and advice. The Sloan Lab Fellowship in the Sundance Institute Episodic Program, which supports a writer with an early-stage episodic project to support its development for television or online platforms. It includes a cash grant to support the development of the project, a stipend for a science advisor, and mentorship and other support from Sundance staff. The Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, which is selected by a jury of film and science professionals. This award and accompanying cash prize is presented at the Sundance Film Festival to the writer and director of an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character. The Science-in-Film Forum at the Sundance Film Festival, which is a moderated panel discussion featuring independent filmmakers and leading scientists and technology experts. Grant funds support these initiatives and additional outreach, publicity, and administrative costs for a period of two years.