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: University of California, Berkeley
    amount: $330,476
    city: Berkeley, CA
    year: 2014

    To understand the microbial community response to water damage in residential buildings

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Microbiology of the Built Environment
    • Investigator Rachel Adams

    Funds from this grant support efforts by Rachel Adams at the University of California, Berkeley and Michael Waring, assistant professor of civil, architectural, and environmental engineering at Drexel University, who propose to examine the microbial community response to water damage in residential buildings. Adams and Waring have three objectives: to apply molecular ecological approaches to better understand any changes in microbial biomass and composition that accompany water intrusion into residences; to inform microbial sampling strategies in residential buildings; and to determine community- level patterns for how building conditions/characteristics and microbial community composition are associated. Adams, Waring, and their team will conduct well-replicated surveys of 60 residential units in order to achieve these objectives, studying buildings in Red Hook, Brooklyn that experienced water damage during Superstorm Sandy in October 2012, as well as similar, though undamaged buildings, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.  Over a period of three to four weeks, they plan to make continuous measurements of indoor and outdoor temperature, relative and absolute humidity, light intensity, HVAC system activity, and integrated PM2.5 and PM10 measurements. They will then characterize the microbial community composition in both time-integrated and discrete-time-period samples. Data collected will permit the team to analyze the variation in microbial community composition associated with building characteristics and operation, geographic location, and the extent of water damage. Findings will be shared through peer-reviewed publications, presentations at scientific conferences, articles in trade journals, and blog posts. The team also plans to write one article for a lay audience.

    To understand the microbial community response to water damage in residential buildings

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  • grantee: RAND Corporation
    amount: $378,666
    city: Santa Monica, CA
    year: 2014

    To investigate the role of psychological factors in individuals’ planning and subsequent decisions about the timing and staging of their transition from work to retirement

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Working Longer
    • Investigator Andrew Parker

    This grant funds a project by economist Susan Rohwedder of the RAND Corporation to examine the psychological factors in individuals’ planning and subsequent decisions about the timing and staging of their decisions to work beyond conventional retirement age and how and when to transition from work to retirement.  Rohwedder and her team will investigate whether and to what extent psychological factors such as cognitive abilities, beliefs about the future, and personality explain differences in individuals’ staging and timing of late-in-life work decisions and subsequent retirement. While psychological factors have been shown to play an important role in various domains of individual decision-making, they have received little attention so far in the context of the complex decisions involved in late-in-life work choices and retirement transitions. Bringing together a cross-disciplinary team with expertise in cognitive psychology and classical and behavioral economics, they hope to fill this gap.

    To investigate the role of psychological factors in individuals’ planning and subsequent decisions about the timing and staging of their transition from work to retirement

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  • grantee: New York Botanical Garden
    amount: $1,155,244
    city: Bronx, NY
    year: 2014

    As support for the New York Botanical Garden to digitize 20,000 plant species records and to become a major Content Hub for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), while co-heading World Flora Online, the first complete online scientific resource for all Earth's 350,000 plant species

    • Program Technology
    • Sub-program Universal Access to Knowledge
    • Investigator WIlliam Thomas

    Though plants have enormous value for society in terms of food, medicine, the environment, and economics, and hold significant social and cultural value, no single site provides accurate, comprehensive, and open access data on the known species of flowering plants.  This grant to the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) supports its efforts become one of four lead international institutions spearheading the creation of World Flora Online (WFO), the first open access, online resource for accurate and comprehensive information for all of Earth's 350,000 known plant species.  NYBG will also become one of a dozen major content hubs for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), making available not only its first 20,000 plant species records and all 85,000 records when completed, but also depositing over a million existing plant specimen records in DPLA's index, a 15 percent increase in DPLA's current holdings.

    As support for the New York Botanical Garden to digitize 20,000 plant species records and to become a major Content Hub for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), while co-heading World Flora Online, the first complete online scientific resource for all Earth's 350,000 plant species

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  • grantee: The Brookings Institution
    amount: $600,000
    city: Washington, DC
    year: 2014

    To present accessible, reliable, and influential research through the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity

    • Program Research
    • Initiative Behavioral Economics and Household Finance (BEHF)
    • Sub-program Economics
    • Investigator Justin Wolfers

    This grant provides continued support for the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) a series of conferences and journals that serve as premier outlets for impartial, nonpartisan, policy-relevant economic research. Over the next three years, grant funds will support organizational and administrative costs associated with the BPEA, including biannual meetings, commissioned papers, and a “Living Papers” series that allows research results to be updated in real time as new data becomes available.  Potential topics to be covered include household finance, macroeconomic dynamics, quantitative easing, and macroprudential regulation.

    To present accessible, reliable, and influential research through the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity

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  • grantee: University of Michigan
    amount: $999,785
    city: Ann Arbor, MI
    year: 2014

    To establish an independent, scientific, and comprehensive source of detailed information about the results of public and private investments in science

    • Program Research
    • Initiative Economic Analysis of Science and Technology (EAST)
    • Sub-program Economics
    • Investigator Jason Owen-Smith

    If those who discover new ideas could appropriate all the benefits, then, at least in principle, market mechanisms could efficiently determine investments in science. But private and collective incentives diverge in the presence of externalities. We just do not know in advance where, when, or for whom research results will become valuable. Because predicting or charging for such applications can be difficult, markets tend to underallocate and misallocate support for basic research. This grant funds research by a team led by Jason Owen-Smith to examine the return to investments in basic science by tracking how research grants eventually do and do not result in gainful applications. To collect, process, and study the detailed data necessary for carrying this out, Owen-Smith and his colleagues will establish an Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS) based at the University of Michigan.  Foundation funds will support data infrastructure at the University of Michigan, as well as infrastructure at the University of Chicago and Ohio State.

    To establish an independent, scientific, and comprehensive source of detailed information about the results of public and private investments in science

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  • grantee: University of Pennsylvania
    amount: $275,527
    city: Philadelphia, PA
    year: 2014

    To study how knowledge generated by research and development spills over through innovation networks

    • Program Research
    • Initiative Economic Analysis of Science and Technology (EAST)
    • Sub-program Economics
    • Investigator Ufuk Akcigit

    If those who discover new ideas could appropriate all the benefits, then, at least in principle, market mechanisms could efficiently determine investments in science. But private and collective incentives diverge in the presence of externalities. We just do not know in advance where, when, or for whom research results will become valuable. Because predicting or charging for such applications can be difficult, markets tend to underallocate and misallocate support for basic research. This grant supports efforts by economists Ufuk Akcigit of the University of Pennsylvania and Daron Acemoglu of Harvard University to study economic spillover effects associated with technological progress through the examination and modeling of innovation networks.  Using patent, citation, and other data, the team will construct new theoretical models of innovation spillovers, conduct detailed empirical analyses, and evaluate the counterfactual effects of various innovation policies.  Additional topics to be studied include the role of innovation policy in an open economy; the roots of major real-world innovations that led to significant spillovers; and the role networks play among inventors and financial institutions in generating spillovers.

    To study how knowledge generated by research and development spills over through innovation networks

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  • grantee: Astrophysical Research Consortium
    amount: $3,500,000
    city: Seattle, WA
    year: 2014

    To support the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV to design, build, and install an infrared astronomical spectrograph for the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) at the du Pont Telescope in Las Campanas, Chile in order to study the history and formation of the Milky Way galaxy

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Sloan Digital Sky Survey
    • Investigator Michael Blanton

    This grant provides support for the construction, installation, and deployment of an infrared spectrograph for use by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to study star formation in the Milky Way.  The instrument, to be installed on the du Pont Telescope in Las Campanas, Chile, is identical to one already constructed and installed on the Sloan Telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, the SDSS’s primary observational instrument.  The new spectrograph, installed in the southern hemisphere, will allow SDSS researchers, working in collaboration with their Chilean colleagues, to make parallel observations both north and south of the equator, quadrupling the number of observable stars and exposing sections of the inner Milky Way unviewable from the north.  The project also promises to be a productive collaboration between American and Chilean astronomers, with nearly 20 Chilean scientists and engineers from multiple institutions directly involved in the installation and operation of the instrument.

    To support the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV to design, build, and install an infrared astronomical spectrograph for the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) at the du Pont Telescope in Las Campanas, Chile in order to study the history and formation of the Milky Way galaxy

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  • grantee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    amount: $868,954
    city: Cambridge, MA
    year: 2014

    To develop tools that are computationally, administratively, and legally practical for conducting privacy preserving research on social science datasets

    • Program Research
    • Initiative Empirical Economic Research Enablers (EERE)
    • Sub-program Economics
    • Investigator Micah Altman

    This grant funds efforts by Micah Altman of MIT and Salil Vadhan of Harvard to develop practical tools that researchers and repositories can use to process private and proprietary data. The goal of the project is to provide workable procedures that improve the accessibility, reproducibility, and confidentiality of “big data” produced from a variety of sources.  Potential outputs include templates for legal agreements as well as software for depositing and accessing sensitive information. In addition, Altman, Vadhan, and their team plan to analyze the incentives and constraints on players throughout the system—from research funders to university administrators, and from potential data providers to academic publishers. For social scientists, working with personally identifiable data poses significant technical, administrative, and legal challenges.  Though the big data era has made these challenges increasingly ubiquitous, there is hardly anywhere to turn for reliable standards, precedents, or guidance.  This project aims to help rectify that pressing problem.

    To develop tools that are computationally, administratively, and legally practical for conducting privacy preserving research on social science datasets

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  • grantee: WNET
    amount: $1,000,000
    city: New York, NY
    year: 2014

    To produce ten hour-long episodes on "Brain Science and Society" co-hosted by Charlie Rose and Eric Kandel, to be broadcast on PBS and Bloomberg and made available online

    • Program Public Understanding
    • Sub-program Television
    • Investigator Charlie Rose

    This grant provides funds for a new series, to be broadcast on PBS and Bloomberg Television, that will focus on the relationship between brain science and society.  To be hosted by award?winning journalist Charlie Rose and Nobel-winning biologist Eric Kandel, the new series will focus on a wide range of social issues connected with brain science, showing how much or how little the latest advances in neuroscience can help us understand our behavior. Topics will include aggression and the social amplification of violence; gender identity and gender-related differences in cognitive function; psychiatric disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and eating disorders; the inheritance of acquired traits and the impact of growing up in adverse circumstances; the consequences of sports-induced head trauma; brain science and criminal justice; erasing traumatic memories; aging populations and brain function; and genetic counseling for neurological and psychiatric disorders.  The series will consist of 10, hour-long episodes with each episode featuring a panel of four-to-five experts in roundtable discussion.

    To produce ten hour-long episodes on "Brain Science and Society" co-hosted by Charlie Rose and Eric Kandel, to be broadcast on PBS and Bloomberg and made available online

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  • grantee: CUNY TV Foundation
    amount: $457,200
    city: New York, NY
    year: 2014

    To pilot a 13-part TV series co-hosted by a  journalist and a scientist that reviews the latest movies and television shows, with an emphasis on the science angle

    • Program Public Understanding
    • Sub-program Television
    • Investigator Robert Isaacson

    Funds from this grant provide partial support for the pilot season of a new series, Science at the Movies, which will review the scientific content and characters of the films, television, and other entertainment media.  To be produced by CUNY TV and co-hosted by a team of one scientist and one journalist, the 13-episode, half-hour series aims to attract the general film?loving audience while casting a fun and friendly light on the scientific and technological content or the scientific implications, violations, or validations of popular entertainment.  Topics will include how the lives and work of real scientists differ from on-screen portrayals on screen, and how elements of science and technology underlie both everyday events and the most dramatic or comedic activities.  The show will air on CUNY TV and be offered for national distribution to PBS affiliates.

    To pilot a 13-part TV series co-hosted by a  journalist and a scientist that reviews the latest movies and television shows, with an emphasis on the science angle

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