This grant funds a project led by Annette Bernhardt and Jesse Rothstein at the University of California, Berkeley to study the incidence and characteristics of independent contracting using tax return data for California from 2013 to 2017. The study will focus, in particular, on how both pre- and postretirement older workers combine independent contracting with other sources of income. Analyzing both W-2s and 1099s, Bernhardt and her team will look closely at persons with both types of incomes, permitting an assessment of whether independent contracting is the main or supplemental work activity. The richness of the dataset will also allow preliminary analysis of trends and patterns into and out of independent contracting work over time and correlations between independent contracting and race, gender, ethnicity, and age. The linked dataset created will also provide a significant resource to the state of California, to other states wanting to broaden data sources on independent contractors, and to researchers who can apply to use the datasets in their own work.

Changes in health, family, and work may make working longer difficult if not risky for substantial sections of the future U.S. population. This grant supports a community of scholars to produce 12 papers involving original research that will introduce a new framework for understanding current and future trends in working longer. The resulting volume—published either as a book or in a high-impact special journal issue—will examine multiple contexts that shape Americans’ likelihood of working longer, with emphasis on two cross-cutting themes of change across cohorts and heterogeneity across population subgroups, which have not been sufficiently studied to date. Under the leadership of Lisa Berkman of Harvard, this project will bring together a multidisciplinary group of distinguished scholars and invite them to collaborate with promising junior scholars, inviting the next generation of researchers to critically examine conventional thinking in this area. Grant funds will support three meetings so that authors can integrate objectives, gain important feedback from each other, and present their results in a policy-relevant setting. The project’s goals are threefold: to publish original research that brings critical, new perspectives to the scholarship on working longer; to build a new, intergenerational community of scholars who will set the agenda for future research; and to disseminate high-impact findings that have the potential to influence policymakers and public discourse.

The aging of the population and the concomitant demands on families to provide elder care raise important questions about the effectiveness of state-level Paid Family Leave (PFL) policies, which purport to protect adults who provide care to aging parents and spouses. This grant to H. Elizabeth Peters at the Urban Institute funds a study of how well PFL policies in California and New Jersey protect caregivers. The study will examine two separate sets of questions. First, Peters and her team will begin by examining differential outcomes on labor supply, economic well being, and health for older caregivers in states with PFL programs and states without, and within states both before and after the establishment of the programs. Second, the team will employ focus groups to explore and explain the curiously low utilization rate of PFL policies by workers.

The Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York (CUNY) is the only academic institution in the country devoted to promoting the practice of biography. Founded in 2007, its mission is “to foster excellence in biographical writing and to encourage the academy to understand biography as a scholarly and rigorous discipline.” This grant underwrites an annual fellowship at the Center to support an author writing a biography of a scientist, engineer, inventor, or mathematician. Fellows will receive a one-time award of $72,000 and be provided a graduate research assistant, dedicated office space, and access to both the Center’s fellow biographers and CUNY’s science faculty as advisors. Additional grant funds will support outreach to publicize the fellowship with relevant audiences.

This grant provides three years of support to the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) to maintain and expand its Sloan Science & Film website, the most up-to-date, comprehensive resource for the Foundation’s Film program. In addition to cataloging over 600 past, present, and upcoming film projects by Sloan supported filmmakers, the site, along with its various social media channels, serves as an education, information, and engagement platform for the growing science in film community. Supported activities include updating the Sloan film catalog, live streaming six public events promoting science in film, producing four articles per week for publication on the site, and hiring a digital engagement strategist to maximize engagement across the site’s various social media channels.

This grant continues support for a program at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama (CMU) that exposes top dramatic writing students to science and technology and awards prizes to student screenwriters who write science- or technology-themed scripts. The CMU program includes a fall symposium that brings scientists to the drama school to introduce students to recent developments in a variety of scientific disciplines; a year-long screenwriting workshop that meets weekly and focuses on the challenges and opportunities posed by incorporating science into dramatic or comedic narratives, a mentorship program that pairs film students with working scientists to help them depict science accurately in their work, an annual screenwriting competition that awards $17,500 to the two best science-themed scripts submitted, and a yearly showcase in Los Angeles and New York to bring student filmmakers into contact with leading producers, directors, and distributors in the film and television industry. Grant funds provide core support for these activities for another three years.

The Sloan Museum in Flint Michigan was created through a personal gift from Alfred P. Sloan Jr. and still bears his name. The museum is currently engaged in a $24 million modernization campaign to transform itself into the premier regional resource for early childhood and K-12 STEM and history education. Plans include the construction of a 10,000-square-foot Science Discovery Hall featuring a Makers Lab, interactive physical science and earth science exhibits, a spaceship earth climbing structure, and a specially designed entryway focusing on “what is science.” The museum estimates that more than 200,000 people will visit annually, including 90,000 K-12 students, many of whom will come from underserved communities. Funds from this grant support the Sloan Museum’s modernization campaign.

Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is host to a unique program, “Fiction and Entertainment,” devoted to the notion that architectural training and a strong design background provide an excellent foundation for success in nonarchitectural fields such as media and entertainment. Funds from this grant support an expansion of the Fiction and Entertainment program that will help 16 master’s students incorporate the latest research in AI and automation technologies into multimedia fictional narratives including short films, animations, documentaries, video games, VR environments, music videos, and web series. Grant funds will allow students to engage in a year-long exploration of AI and automation technologies guided by eight experts in these fields—from Google, Uber, Sidewalk Lab, and elsewhere. Additional workshops and labs will pair students with leading artists to discuss world building, storytelling, character development, and production. As they refine their projects, each student will be matched with an appropriate technologist collaborator whose research they will crystallize into fictional projects. The grant will be capped by a daylong storytelling symposium, Fear & Wonder, which draws 500 people to hear leading directors, conceptual artists, video game designers, and storytellers “share their approach to imagining alternative worlds as a means to understanding our own.” The resulting work products, which may take a variety of multimedia forms, will then be screened at a Future of Automation symposium, which will be interspersed with themed panel discussions to further contextualize the issues. Experts and well-known figures in technology and the arts will be invited to participate. Last, Sci-Arc will produce a 12-minute documentary about all the projects and distribute it via social media.

This grant is to the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association (WETA) to produce and air a three-part television documentary series, The Gene: An Intimate History. Produced by legendary documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and based on the critically acclaimed bestseller by physician and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History will use human case studies of the genetic treatment of illness to tell the story of genetic research while exploring its scientific, medical, social, and ethical implications. In addition to a three-hour documentary and associated website, the broadcast will be accompanied by a major public engagement effort around genetics, as well as a wealth of educational curricula.