Decarbonizing chemical manufacturing is one of the key steps needed to reduce emissions from the industrial sector, as chemical manufacturing accounts for 30% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The Decarbonizing Chemical Manufacturing Using Sustainable Electrification (DC-MUSE) is a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary research network headquartered at New York University that involves a range of faculty from across 14 different research institutions studying different aspects of decarbonizing chemical manufacturing, including such as how to replace high heat industrial processes with renewable-powered alternatives, how to coordinate power demand from the chemical industry with other grid needs, and how to design backup power options through the use of batteries and other technologies. The DC-MUSE network is in involved in the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, an effort backed by the National Science Foundation to strengthen connections between academia and industry, and DC-MUSE is working towards becoming an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC). DC-MUSE is led by Director André Taylor, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at New York University (NYU) and Deputy Director Elizabeth Biddinger, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the City University of New York. Building on previous Sloan Foundation support for DC-MUSE, this grant provides funding for three critical center functions that will help the network to grow and evolve. First, funds will support the role of a Managing Director, who is tasked with ensuring effective center management, outreach, and fundraising. Second, funds will provide support for a post-doctoral fellow who will assist in research coordination and management, working with faculty across the DC-MUSE network. Third, funds will support the organization of a New Research Directions small grants see fund that will enable DC-MUSE leadership to make 3-4 grants of around $25,000 each. The goal of this seed fund is to launch new collaborative research efforts related to decarbonizing chemical manufacturing, both among faculty already affiliated with DC-MUSE and as a way to engage collaborators from outside of the network.

This grant supports the continuation and expansion of a fellowship program aimed at advancing interdisciplinary doctoral student training related to the economic, engineering, and policy dimensions of transportation decarbonization. Research on decarbonizing transportation tends to be highly siloed along disciplinary lines, with economists and engineers utilizing different methodological approaches to understand consumer preferences for low-carbon transport options. However, integration of these disciplinary perspectives is needed to realize a more comprehensive understanding of the behavioral, social, and technological dimensions involved in decarbonizing transportation. This interdisciplinary transportation doctoral fellowship program will provide graduate students from four universities with a broader perspective on transportation decarbonization, train them in how to integrate different methods and approaches into their research, and connect those students with practitioners and decision-makers. This grant provides funding to extend this doctoral fellowship program from the original sites at the University of Maryland, College Park and Carnegie Mellon University to two additional universities that have strong track records on transportation decarbonization research rooted in both economics and engineering in Cornell University and the University of Michigan. The program is led by Joshua Linn, Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, and Kate Whitefoot, Associate Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and it now includes Ricardo Daziano, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Shanjun Li, Professor of Economics, at Cornell University and Anna Stefanopoulou, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Michigan. Each of the four participating universities will receive funding for one doctoral student fellowship per year, for a total of four students supported in each annual cohort and eight students to be supported in total over the grant period. Funds will support one year of stipend and tuition assistance for participating students, engagement activities with faculty both within and across institutions, an interdisciplinary reading group, interdisciplinary academic mentoring, and involvement of an external advisory group of practitioners who will provide real-world perspectives on prospective research projects. Funds will also support two research dissemination conferences to share findings across scholarly and practitioner communities.

The transition of the United States energy system away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy and other low-carbon energy sources will involve the greater use of critical minerals and metals. Critical minerals and metals are necessary components for renewable energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. Domestic demand for these building blocks of the clean energy transition is projected to increase dramatically over the next decades, both in response to rising consumer demand and to domestic sourcing requirements in the Inflation Reduction Act. However, little attention has been paid to the issue of public perceptions of critical mineral and metal mining and how these views might shape future supply chains and policymaking. To address this gap, Mahelet Fikru and Kwame Awuah-Offeil at the Missouri University of Science and Technology will conduct a pair of nationally representative surveys to evaluate public perception of critical minerals and metals. The first survey will focus on gauging public awareness about the role that critical minerals and metals play in clean energy transitions, and it will study public perceptions of policies that aim to advance domestic critical mineral production. The second survey will ascertain how consumers value tradeoffs between different factors associated with the critical mineral inputs of clean energy technologies. In particular, this survey will study how consumers value the source of the critical minerals and metals in terms of whether or not those materials are produced domestically or abroad, the sustainability of the mining practices and environmental impact, and the ultimate cost of the clean energy technologies that use these mineral and metal inputs. Results from both surveys will be used to develop an economic model to investigate the impact of different critical mineral and metal policies on upstream mining companies and downstream clean energy technology manufacturers. The team will also use the model to examine which policies might be well suited to achieve the goals of a low-carbon energy system and develop a more sustainable domestic critical mineral and metal supply chain. Three peer-reviewed journal articles will report on findings, and the team will also make all survey materials, datasets, models, and code publicly available.

Earth biochemistry relies on DNA as the information-carrying polymer and water as the chemistry-facilitating solvent. Life on other planets, however, could leverage very different chemistry. This grant supports work by Sara Seager, Professor of Planetary Science, Physics, and Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that will explore an alternative to Earth biochemistry. The proposed research focuses on identifying a DNA-like molecule that is functional in concentrated sulfuric acid (CSA), the primary component of Venus’ atmosphere and a water-alternative solvent found on many planets in our galaxy.   There are several steps to establishing that a DNA-like molecule can function in CSA, and Professor Seager is tackling what is perhaps the core challenge: identifying components of a DNA-analog molecule that are structurally stable and appropriately reactive in CSA, focusing on the three primary molecular components of DNA: nucleic acid bases, so-called ‘linker’ molecules, and a ‘molecular backbone’ structure. Her project is divided into four tasks. In Task 1 Seager and her researcher team will determine the CSA reactivity of the nucleic acid bases found in DNA/RNA. While Seager has demonstrated that the core structures of these canonical bases are CSA-stable, it’s not yet known whether the bases can bond with one another in CSA; something required to form a DNA-like molecule.   Excess protons found in CSA (or in any acid) may interfere with the hydrogen bonding that holds two bases together in a DNA molecule, making base-pairing with these canonical bases impossible in CSA. Accordingly, in Task 2 the researcher team will test the CSA stability and reactivity of ‘alternative’ nucleic acid bases that do not rely on hydrogen bonding for base-pairing. In Task 3, the researchers will develop a list of linker and backbone molecule candidates that promise to be stable in CSA and in Task 4 these candidates will be subjected to CSA stability/reactivity testing.   Establishing that a replicating, information-bearing molecule can exist in CSA goes a long way to establishing CSA as a solvent that can host life. Such a finding would significantly impact exoplanet research, expand the number of planets regarded as habitable, and inform planned and proposed missions to Venus aimed at searching for signs of extraterrestrial life.

One of the primary challenges relating to the widespread electrification of transportation is the timing of electric vehicle (EV) charging. If all EV owners plug in their vehicles at the same time of day, electricity demand on the grid will rise suddenly and dramatically, forcing grid operators to quickly ramp up electricity production. Smart charging programs can help curb the detrimental side effects of a growing number of EVs simultaneously re-charging on the grid. These programs offer financial and other incentives to encourage consumers to shift their EV charging patterns to times of low electricity demand. Some of these smart charging programs incentivize consumers to allow companies to remotely control and manage their EV charging schedule through “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) technology. This grant funds efforts to advance our understanding of the social, behavioral, and economic tradeoffs of different smart charging program features and assess how various program features might limit or facilitate a smart charging program’s viability, both nationally and in different regions and electricity grid systems. A research team led by John Helveston at The George Washington University and including Eric Hittinger (Rochester Institute of Technology), Alan Jenn (University of California, Davis), and Brian Tarroja (University of California, Irvine) will use a choice-based conjoint survey analysis to estimate how consumers value various smart charging program features. Program features that will be studied include how much consumers would need to be compensated for program participation, the time window a program would have control over vehicle charging, how much of the battery or percent of full charge the program has control over, and whether the program can determine when to charge the EV or when to discharge the vehicle back to the grid as part of a V2G program. The team will study these features both individually and in combination, gauging what mix of features would be most desirable for consumers. Results will be integrated into an energy systems model and used to investigate three case studies of smart charging programs in partnership with three utilities in different regions of the country to assess the real-world impacts of different program features on emissions reduction, peak electricity demand, and electric system costs. The team plans to produce at least two peer-reviewed journal articles, reports and policy briefs for practitioners, and will make survey data publicly available that facilitates integration with energy models for other researchers and utilities to use. Results are expected to help inform the design of future smart charging programs in different utility regions and for different consumer bases.

An Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is an organizational construct, originally developed in technology companies, with dedicated staff who coordinate and support open source activity. When adapted to a university, an OSPO can offer: 1) training and individualized support for faculty, students, and staff who want to grow local software efforts into healthy open source projects, 2) advice on how best to contribute to existing projects, 3) documentation of the value of open source work and 4) facilitation of relationships with other organizational units like technology transfer, research computing, or the library. This grant funds the establishment of an OSPO at the University of Texas at Austin, co-led by Jennifer Schopf, Angela Newell, Michael Shensky, and James Howison. UT Austin’s planned OPSO will be a collaboration between Campus IT, the UT Libraries, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), and the School of Information. It will structure its activities strategically around a “Participation Pathway” that envisions engaging faculty and students by moving from the basic use of open source software through contribution, sharing, accepting external contributions, and ultimately the development of an ecosystem of related projects. Grant funds will support a portion of the OSPO Director’s time, substantial engagement from two Library-based positions with expertise in open source research software, a pool of trainers to run short bootcamps and courses. We anticipate support for a broad set of faculty-driven open source projects, and the inclusion of additional open source material into several existing support systems on campus. Other funds will support the creation of resources focused on lowering barriers to share and reuse scientific software, including documenting best practices surrounding the containerization, distribution, and deployment of open source software.

An Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is an organizational construct, originally developed in technology companies, with dedicated staff who coordinate and support open source activity. When adapted to a university, an OSPO can offer: 1) training and individualized support for faculty, students, and staff who want to grow local software efforts into healthy open source projects, 2) advice on how best to contribute to existing projects, 3) documentation of the value of open source work and 4) facilitation of relationships with other organizational units like technology transfer, research computing, or the library. This grant supports the establishment of an OSPO at Syracuse University. The effort is a collaboration between Syracuse University’s Office of Research, SU Libraries, and Information Technology Services and will be led and championed by Duncan Brown, Syracuse’s Vice President for Research. Sloan Foundation grant funds will support the hiring of a new full-time director who will report directly to Brown. Other grant funds will support a post-doctoral fellow focused on open source software development, an annual summer workshop, support for 15 faculty-driven, open source development or research projects, and the launch of a website portal that will provide access to publications, patents, products, and software developed through collaboration with the OSPO. In addition, the project team will document lessons learned and publish a playbook containing these lessons to inform similar efforts at other university campuses.

An Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is an organizational construct, originally developed in technology companies, with dedicated staff who coordinate and support open source activity. When adapted to a university, an OSPO can offer: 1) training and individualized support for faculty, students, and staff who want to grow local software efforts into healthy open source projects, 2) advice on how best to contribute to existing projects, 3) documentation of the value of open source work and 4) facilitation of relationships with other organizational units like technology transfer, research computing, or the library. This grant funds the establishment of an OSPO at Stanford University. Stanford’s OSPO will be anchored in the Center for Open and Reproducible Science and led by cognitive neuroscientist Russell Poldrack. Grants funds will support a host of activities, including the recruitment of a full-time community manager, the establishment of an external advisory board and executive committee, the creation of a registry of open source projects being spearheaded by Stanford faculty, support for at least 20 faculty projects, and an ongoing series of lectures, hackathons and code sprints to engage the campus community. In addition, Poldrack and his team are actively engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in open source communities and plan to compile a guide of best practices for fostering inclusive, welcoming open source projects.

An Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is an organizational construct, originally developed in technology companies, with dedicated staff who coordinate and support open source activity. When adapted to a university, an OSPO can offer: 1) training and individualized support for faculty, students, and staff who want to grow local software efforts into healthy open source projects, 2) advice on how best to contribute to existing projects, 3) documentation of the value of open source work and 4) facilitation of relationships with other organizational units like technology transfer, research computing, or the library. This grant supports the establishment of an OSPO at George Washington University. The GW OSPO will sit organizationally within the university’s Libraries and Academic Innovation (LAI) unit and be co-led by Geneva Henry (the dean of LAI as well as the current Vice Provost for libraries and information technology) and Lorena Barba (Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering). Grant funds will support the hiring of a Program Director, consulting services to individual faculty and staff, an annual “Open Source Con” that would bring together developers and contributors from across campus, strategic planning activities around web content and services, and community-building and outreach activities to engage GW faculty and students, including workshops, software camps, information sessions, micro-learning courses, and undergraduate awards program recognizing outstanding open source software contributions by GW students.