Grants Database

The Foundation awards approximately 200 grants per year (excluding the Sloan Research Fellowships), totaling roughly $80 million dollars in annual commitments in support of research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics. This database contains grants for currently operating programs going back to 2008. For grants from prior years and for now-completed programs, see the annual reports section of this website.

Grants Database

Grantee
Amount
City
Year
  • grantee: Council on Library and Information Resources
    amount: $738,756
    city: Washington, DC
    year: 2015

    To support data and software curation postdoctoral fellowships, in order to develop emerging leaders in the field and encourage permanent staffing solutions within academic libraries

    • Program Technology
    • Sub-program Data & Computational Research
    • Investigator Charles Henry

    This grant provides partial funding for eight postdoctoral fellowships in Data Curation for the Sciences and Social Sciences. Though the fellowship program is administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), fellows are appointed at host institutions, where they work on digital initiatives that marshal a university’s technical, archival, and library resources in service to the data curation and management needs of the institution’s researchers.  Of the eight fellowships supported, four will focus on software curation, the growing archival field that seeks to preserve the software programs and platforms developed for and as a result of scientific research.  In addition to providing fellowship support, grant funds will expand the fellowship program to include improved education and training on software curation, both among the fellows and at participating host institutions.

    To support data and software curation postdoctoral fellowships, in order to develop emerging leaders in the field and encourage permanent staffing solutions within academic libraries

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  • grantee: Harvard University
    amount: $751,941
    city: Cambridge, MA
    year: 2015

    To facilitate social science research on large-scale datasets by expanding the capabilities of Dataverse repository software

    • Program Technology
    • Sub-program Data & Computational Research
    • Investigator Gary King

    There are currently no academic social science repositories that can routinely handle terabytes of data. This despite the fact that the rise of the Internet and new sensing technologies are creating large new datasets of potential interest to social scientists, like phone usage data or geospatial social media data. This grant supports efforts by Gary King at Harvard University to expand the popular Dataverse platform so that it becomes the first data archiving and management application capable of handling social science data at the terabyte scale. Fully open source, Dataverse is a decentralized web application that allows individual institutions to download and run their own instances. Universities and research labs can manage their data easily while at the same time configuring the system to meet their own needs and comply with their own institutional policies. Funds from this grant will fund the technical development of the Dataverse platform to accommodate the immense logistical and resource challenges posed by “big data” datasets, expanding the power of an increasingly important resource for social scientists everywhere.

    To facilitate social science research on large-scale datasets by expanding the capabilities of Dataverse repository software

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  • grantee: New York Genome Center, Inc.
    amount: $3,000,000
    city: New York, NY
    year: 2015

    To strengthen the bioinformatics community in New York City

    • Program New York City Program
    • Investigator Michael Zody

    Funds from this grant provide continued operating support to the New York Genome Center (NYGC) in its efforts to strengthen and diversify the bioinformatics community in New York City. Sloan funds will support the NYGC’s plans to develop new infrastructure, methods, and training that it expects will catalyze research insights, empower researchers with new bioinformatics capabilities, and continue to solidify New York City as a genomics and life sciences hub. Over the next three years, the NYGC will continue to develop its bioinformatics capabilities in support of its member institutions, develop a shared computing facility with access to public data sets and state-of-the-art data analysis pipelines, craft new algorithms and techniques in bioinformatics, and train biological and medical researchers in core bioinformatics skills through training courses and in-person and virtual educational sessions. Expected outputs include peer-reviewed publications, updated software packages, a bioinformatics commons and genomic data warehouse, and the training of 50 researchers per year.

    To strengthen the bioinformatics community in New York City

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  • grantee: Manhattan Theatre Club
    amount: $600,000
    city: New York, NY
    year: 2015

    To support the MTC/Sloan Initiative commissioning, developing, and producing new science and technology plays

    • Program Public Understanding
    • Sub-program Theater
    • Investigator Elizabeth Rothman

    This grant continues support of an initiative by the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) to commission, develop, and produce new science- and technology-themed plays. Over the next three years, MTC plans to commission 15 science-themed plays from both emerging and established playwrights, provide dramaturgical support to commissioned artists, hold in-house readings of all completed scripts, stage three public readings, and produce one science-themed play at the theater’s 47th Street mainstage. Plays are commissioned and scripts selected for production in consultation with an independent advisory board composed of distinguished working scientists. Commissioned playwrights receive between $10,000 and $20,000 for their work.

    To support the MTC/Sloan Initiative commissioning, developing, and producing new science and technology plays

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  • grantee: Rockefeller University
    amount: $1,500,000
    city: New York, NY
    year: 2015

    To support Jesse Ausubel's continued leadership on behalf of the Sloan Foundation of the Deep Carbon Observatory program initiated in 2009

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Deep Carbon Observatory
    • Investigator Jesse Ausubel

    Funds from this grant continue support for Jesse H. Ausubel, Director of Rockefeller University’s Program for the Human Environment, in his role as the Sloan Foundation’s primary liaison to the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO).  As Sloan’s representative at the DCO, Ausubel serves as a member of the DCO leadership, elicits grant proposals in support of the DCO’s four research communities, oversees progress and reporting on the Foundation’s approximately 30 active DCO grants, represents the Foundation’s policies, priorities, concerns, and aspirations to the DCO leadership, and prepares periodic reports to the Foundation on the DCO’s progress towards its decadal goals.  Grant funds provide primary salary and administrative support for Ausubel and his team’s activities through the anticipated completion of the DCO in 2019, where his work will focus on managing important late-stage DCO projects related to modeling and visualization, intellectual synthesis of DCO discoveries, dissemination of DCO results, and crafting stable institutional and intellectual legacies for the program after Foundation support ends in 2019.  

    To support Jesse Ausubel's continued leadership on behalf of the Sloan Foundation of the Deep Carbon Observatory program initiated in 2009

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  • grantee: Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
    amount: $300,150
    city: Paris, France
    year: 2015

    To create and lead “Task Force 2020” to consider possible futures for the Deep Carbon Observatory after its first decade

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Deep Carbon Observatory
    • Investigator Claude Jaupart

    Though the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) was conceived as a 10-year effort, a midterm external review of the collaborative’s achievements suggested that the DCO leadership explore the possibilities for continuing the collaboration after Sloan Foundation funding lapses in 2019. This grant supports the creation of a special task force to explore such options. Led by French geologist Claud Jaupert, the task force will outline practical requirements and consequences of post?2019 options for the Deep Carbon Observatory, exploring the ways in which the DCO might be continued, expanded, or wound down. It will scan the intellectual horizon for new research ventures; outline international cooperative programs that could build on the DCO community and expand its scientific reach; identify researchers and academic institutions that might participate in post?2019 activities; and search for institutions, funding bodies, and foundations that could provide financial support for post?2019 activities. It would carry out these activities through commissioned papers, visits with key stakeholders and institutions, and a trio of workshops, including special focus on the (now) younger scientists who will be in the prime of their careers during the decade of the 2020s. The effort represents a reasoned, prudent way to evaluate what to do, if anything, with the databases, websites, instruments, models, monitoring networks, and human capital created by the DCO’s first decade of discovery.

    To create and lead “Task Force 2020” to consider possible futures for the Deep Carbon Observatory after its first decade

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  • grantee: University of California, Davis
    amount: $700,000
    city: Davis, CA
    year: 2015

    To form a Deep Carbon Modeling Forum and to stimulate creation of a system of linked models that represent and explore the dynamics of the deep carbon system as a whole

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Deep Carbon Observatory
    • Investigator Louise Kellogg

    Funds from this grant support an effort by Louise Kellogg of the University of California, Davis to lead a multidisciplinary group of Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) researchers in the development of the first stages of a Deep Carbon Earth Model that integrates existing geophysical knowledge with insights uncovered by the Deep Carbon Observatory. The project will involve representatives from each of the DCO’s four scientific communities—Reservoirs and Fluxes, Deep Energy, Deep Life, and Extreme Physics and Chemistry—as they come together to craft a series of interoperable modules that can be used to model the quantities, movements, origins, and forms of deep Earth carbon. Though a fully functional, predictive model is the ultimate goal, the project promises to provide several ancillary benefits to the larger DCO effort, including identifying gaps in existing knowledge, increasing communication between the DCO’s diverse communities, and establishing project-wide modeling protocols that can serve as the basis for both current and future modeling efforts.

    To form a Deep Carbon Modeling Forum and to stimulate creation of a system of linked models that represent and explore the dynamics of the deep carbon system as a whole

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  • grantee: University of California, Los Angeles
    amount: $1,250,000
    city: Los Angeles, CA
    year: 2015

    To continue to lead and coordinate the activities of the Extreme Physics and Chemistry community of the Deep Carbon Observatory

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Deep Carbon Observatory
    • Investigator Craig Manning

    The Extreme Physics and Chemistry (EPC) community of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is an international collaboration of geologists and geophysicists who have come together to transform our understanding of the unique physical and chemical properties of the 90 percent of Earth’s carbon estimated to reside in the planet’s high-pressure, high-temperature interior. EPC researchers study the diverse variety of forms deep carbon takes—solids, magmas, melts, low-density fluids—and examine the physical and chemical transformations carbon undergoes as it rises from the core to the surface and falls from the surface to the core. This grant provides two years of continued core support for the EPC as it moves toward completion of its ambitious research agenda.

    To continue to lead and coordinate the activities of the Extreme Physics and Chemistry community of the Deep Carbon Observatory

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  • grantee: Marine Biological Laboratory
    amount: $1,250,000
    city: Woods Hole, MA
    year: 2015

    To continue to lead and coordinate the activities of the Deep Life community of the Deep Carbon Observatory

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Deep Carbon Observatory
    • Investigator Mitchell Sogin

    The Deep Life community of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is an international collaboration of researchers who have come together to identify and quantify interactions between deep life and deep Earth carbon, to transform our understanding of the processes that define the diversity and distribution of deep life, and to determine the environmental limits of deep life. This grant provides two years of support to the Deep Life community as it continues its research agenda. Over the next two years the community plans to launch five major field expeditions; conduct genomic?based studies of the diversity and function of deep life; measure and estimate presently unknown quantities like the magnitude of deep Earth biomass and the number of deep Earth endospores; and explore the molecular basis of microbial adaptation to extreme deep subsurface conditions. In addition, Deep Life community scientists will contribute to a DCO-wide modeling and visualization initiative and strengthen the field through the coordination of workshops, community meetings, and fellowships.

    To continue to lead and coordinate the activities of the Deep Life community of the Deep Carbon Observatory

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  • grantee: Syracuse University
    amount: $5,000
    city: Syracuse, NY
    year: 2015

    To  support fifteen undergraduate female physics students in the northeast United States to attend the 2016 American Physical Society Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at Syracuse University

    • Program Higher Education
    • Initiative Professional Advancement of Underrepresented Groups
    • Investigator M. Manning

    To  support fifteen undergraduate female physics students in the northeast United States to attend the 2016 American Physical Society Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at Syracuse University

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