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: St. Edward's University
    amount: $74,994
    city: Austin, TX
    year: 2024

    To facilitate a partnership between St. Edward’s University and Texas State University that will identify and reduce barriers to STEM graduate education

    • Program Higher Education
    • Sub-program Matter-to-Life
    • Investigator Jonathan Hodge

    To facilitate a partnership between St. Edward’s University and Texas State University that will identify and reduce barriers to STEM graduate education

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  • grantee: Montclair State University Foundation
    amount: $75,000
    city: Montclair, NJ
    year: 2024

    To facilitate a collaborative partnership across three Hispanic Serving Institutions focused on eliminating systemic barriers and advancing graduate school opportunities

    • Program Higher Education
    • Investigator Junius Gonzalez

    To facilitate a collaborative partnership across three Hispanic Serving Institutions focused on eliminating systemic barriers and advancing graduate school opportunities

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  • grantee: University of Minnesota
    amount: $249,796
    city: Minneapolis, MN
    year: 2024

    To develop new measures of innovative activity across science and technology using techniques from machine learning and topological data analysis

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Economics
    • Investigator Russell Funk

    To develop new measures of innovative activity across science and technology using techniques from machine learning and topological data analysis

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  • grantee: Case Western Reserve University
    amount: $33,956
    city: Cleveland, OH
    year: 2024

    To model, explain, and illustrate how administrative records and other new data sources can help update the Schedule A list of occupations eligible for expedited work visas

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Economics
    • Investigator Mark Schweitzer

    To model, explain, and illustrate how administrative records and other new data sources can help update the Schedule A list of occupations eligible for expedited work visas

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  • grantee: Bard College
    amount: $500,644
    city: Bronx, NY
    year: 2024

    To support the design of a new science laboratory and teaching curriculum for hands-on research experiences for Bard Early College New York City students

    • Program New York City Program
    • Investigator Dumaine Williams

    The transition from high school to college can be daunting for many students, especially those who come from less-privileged backgrounds. One approach to supporting students through that transition is the introduction of college-level coursework (with credit) while still in high school. The Bard Early Colleges (BEC) are a unique instance of this approach in NYC, going beyond individual college courses to build a network of public high schools in which students complete high school graduation requirements by the end of sophomore year and are considered full-time undergraduate students in their 11th and 12th grades. BEC currently enrolls 1,600 NYC public school students across its four campuses in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn. Each is a public schools, governed by an agreement between Bard College and the NY Department of Education. Across the larger BEC network, 77% of high schoolers are students of color and 73% are classified by their districts as low-income; 60% are first-generation college students and, by the end of their time at BEC, roughly 80% of students receive a two-year Bard College Associate in Arts degrees, including 60 transferable Bard College credits. While the Queens and Manhattan campuses are well-established, the BEC Bronx and Brooklyn campuses are in a “startup phase,” with plans to enroll a new class of students each year until they reach full capacity by 2028. Before reaching full enrollment, these campuses rely on philanthropic support to build capacity for new initiatives that prepare students for a fulfilling and supportive college experience. Funds from this grant will  support the buildout of a new science laboratory on the Bronx campus, enabling Bard faculty in the sciences (across biology, physics and chemistry) to design and develop new biotechnology-based elective courses utilizing specialized equipment such as PCR machines, gel electrophoresis apparatus, centrifuges, micropipettes, incubators and spectrophotometers. Approximately half of grant funds will go to laboratory equipment procurement, and the other half dedicated to staffing, the design of new curriculum, and paid student research experiences.

    To support the design of a new science laboratory and teaching curriculum for hands-on research experiences for Bard Early College New York City students

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  • grantee: The University of Chicago
    amount: $281,945
    city: Chicago, IL
    year: 2024

    To analyze economic, technological, and social factors that determine the success of urban transportation systems in theory and in practice

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Economics
    • Investigator Milena Almagro

    What should urban transportation systems be trying to achieve? Most government officials have one goal only, which is to reduce congestion. They rely on engineering models and passenger tallies to estimate the immediate effects of a policy change—without necessarily taking into account all the behavioral adjustments that might eventually occur. And so additional highway lanes quickly fill up again due to “induced demand.” The total number of rides per day may increase, for example, but who rides is hardly ever mentioned. What would a more comprehensive approach look like? Economists often find it useful to imagine an ideal social planner. Specifically, how would such a czar set public transportation prices, offerings, and fleet sizes so that—when everyone from commuters to ride-share companies make their own best decisions—the resulting trips and trip durations maximize society’s total welfare after netting out costs of all kinds including externalities due to environmental damage, etc.? Even if it seems like a tall order, economists who study industrial organization naturally think about transportation in terms of spatial equilibrium models like this. Under the leadership of Milena Almagro, the researchers have been particularly successful so far at compiling and combining remarkable datasets. These include cell phone records from entire metropolitan areas. Besides travel routes and durations, they are also inferring information about travelers’ home and work locations, income, and other demographic details as well as estimates of environmental impacts, equity considerations, and other externalities. Based on such models and datasets, the team will dive into four deep research questions. They aim to characterize: 1) Optimal mixes of transportation modes, pricing strategies, and service levels; 2) Where expanding public transportation makes sense and where it does not; 3) The potential role of public transport that is “on-demand” rather than scheduled; 4) Gains due to transportation policy coordination across geographical jurisdictions. All will require the analysis of counterfactual scenarios, cross-subsidies, and other methodological challenges that this team is ready to overcome.

    To analyze economic, technological, and social factors that determine the success of urban transportation systems in theory and in practice

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  • grantee: Manhattan Theatre Club
    amount: $710,000
    city: New York, NY
    year: 2024

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

    • Program Public Understanding
    • Sub-program Theater
    • Investigator Scott Kaplan

    This grant continues support for an ongoing partnership at New York City’s Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) to commission, develop, and produce science and technology-themed plays. Over the next three years, MTC will commission nine new plays by both rising and established playwrights that explore scientific themes or include scientists, engineers, inventors, or mathematicians as major characters. Commissions are selected in consultation with an independent scientific advisory panel that serves as a year-round resource to help playwrights ensure scientific accuracy. In addition to the commissions, MTC will provide dramaturgical support, including readings and workshops, to both Sloan-commissioned writers and non-commissioned writers working on science-themed scripts, present a Sloan-commissioned work annually to the public as part of its Ted Snowdon Reading Series, and host an annual event that features three 20-minute staged excerpts from three prominent Sloan-commissions, followed by a panel discussion with scientists and playwrights.

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

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  • grantee: Inside Climate News
    amount: $457,500
    city: Brooklyn, NY
    year: 2024

    To support one full-time reporter to publish articles about New York City’s climate and environmental issues

    • Program Public Understanding
    • Sub-program Special Initiatives
    • Investigator David Sassoon

    Inside Climate News (ICN), the oldest and most dedicated climate newsroom in the country, is requesting three years of funding to support one full-time journalist dedicated to local reporting in New York City focused on climate change and environmental issues. While several news media outlets take a national and global approach to climate coverage, ICN’s goal is to instead show the growing day-to-day impact of climate change on New York City. ICN estimates that the new NYC climate journalist will publish 25-40 stories a year. The beat will include topics such as the city’s natural environment; how the impact of climate change on biodiversity can be mitigated; strategies to adapt to climate impacts such as sea level rise, storm surge and heat; mitigation strategies to reduce New York City’s emissions from transport, buildings and other sectors; environmental injustice and marginalized neighborhoods; clean energy job creation; and holding policymakers and power brokers accountable for environmental impacts.

    To support one full-time reporter to publish articles about New York City’s climate and environmental issues

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  • grantee: Stanford University
    amount: $500,000
    city: Stanford, CA
    year: 2024

    To develop models that advance our understanding of how forces driving chromosomal motion impact the organization and function of chromosomes in eukaryotic cells

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Matter-to-Life
    • Investigator Andrew Spakowitz

    The information stored in genes plays a huge role in directing the cellular processes underlying life, but stored information alone is inadequate to explain how cells function. Cellular forces and associated motions also play a decisive role in determining whether and when genetic information is expressed because DNA can only be copied when a chromosome is in its decompacted state and because forces and other cellular dynamics drive the transition between compacted and decompacted chromosome states. Forces are also central to the creation and migration of chromosomal density fluctuations, pockets of compaction in a nominally decompacted chromosome region (or of decompaction in a compacted region). These migrating density fluctuations can, in different scenarios, contribute both to biological function and to disfunction. Funds from this grant support Andrew Spakowitz, a Professor of Chemical Engineering and of Materials Science & Engineering at Stanford University, to develop theoretical models that will advance our understanding of how forces/dynamics impact the organization and function of chromosomes in eukaryotic cells. Spakowitz plans to achieve a multi-scale model via a staged progression of model development that describes the coupled chemical/mechanical dynamics starting at the molecular scale, he will then expand to intermediate-scale chromosome dynamics (about a tenth of a chromosome), and end with an exploration of dynamics at the scale of an entire chromosome or group of chromosomes. Forces to be modeled include constraining forces that arise from chemical bond formation between two typically distant segments of a chromosome that happen to come into proximity owing to the wiggling motion of a chromosome in the aqueous environment of a cell and which, in turn, promote chromosome compaction; thermal agitation forces (owing to collisions with water molecules) that drive chromosome decompaction; and the force exerted on DNA (by RNA polymerase) during transcription (reading of genetic information).  if successful, the project will improve our understanding of how coupled mechanical and chemical interactions at the molecular-scale drive the organizational dynamics observed at the much larger length scale of a chromosome or group of chromosomes, thereby providing insight into how forces mediate access to and use of genetically encoded information.

    To develop models that advance our understanding of how forces driving chromosomal motion impact the organization and function of chromosomes in eukaryotic cells

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  • grantee: Upjohn Institute for Employment Research
    amount: $794,371
    city: Kalamazoo, MI
    year: 2024

    To aid the design of workforce policies in the childcare sector by estimating the responsiveness of the labor supply to changes in wages, child-staff ratios, and other job characteristics

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Economics
    • Investigator Aaron Sojourner

    Suppose you want to address the critical shortage of caregivers for children. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, childcare workers currently earn hourly wages ($14.22 on average) that are even lower than those of pet caretakers or parking attendants (over $15 each). So part of almost any strategy would be to increase their salaries. But by how much? To formulate an appropriate policy, you would want to know more about the market for childcare workers—especially about the responsiveness of labor supply to changes in wage rates. To measure such responsiveness, economists like to talk about “elasticity.” Formally, it is the percentage change of one variable per percent change in the other. Assuming, for simplicity, that the labor supply curve looks like a line as a function of wage rate, it is easy to compute the elasticity we need from the slope of that line. And to determine that slope, all we need are two points on the line. One of those can be the current market equilibrium, i.e., where supply equals demand. In fact, the only points you ever get to observe are where the supply curve and the demand curve intersect. So to find a second point on the line, you would have to look for a situation that causes employers’ demand for childcare workers to shift. The big problem, though, is that anything that shifts demand is likely to shift supply as well. Then the new equilibrium will not even lie on the original line whose slope you wanted to find. The upshot is that elasticities, though marvelously useful, can be devilishly hard to estimate. That is why, facing proposed legislation it must evaluate, the Congressional Budget Office specifically published a call to researchers for help with estimating the elasticity of labor supply among childcare workers. Aaron Sojourner is stepping up to meet this challenge. Sojourner is organizing three different teams, methods, and data sources that will each help estimate elasticities in different settings he has identified where demand has shifted without necessarily changing the supply curve by much. These include places where: 1) a large new plant or facility opened that attracts jobseekers who were previously minding their children at home instead; 2) a state (e.g., New York or Massachusetts) offered extra COVID relief funds to childcare facilities with more than a certain number of caregivers; 3) a state or city (e.g., New York) rolled out universal Pre-Kindergarten programs that must be staffed quickly. The labor market in each such setting has its own intricacies, interactions, and idiosyncrasies—such as job requirements and quality—that the research teams will also take into account. But the three studies, taken together, will provide much better and more useful estimates of how the supply of caregivers responds to wage changes.  As the saying goes, “Economists agree on everything but the elasticities.” Empirical evidence about those numbers in the context of caregiving is precisely what this project will supply.

    To aid the design of workforce policies in the childcare sector by estimating the responsiveness of the labor supply to changes in wages, child-staff ratios, and other job characteristics

    More
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