The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Summer Institute is arguably the most important and influential annual event for empirical economists. For three weeks, more than 2,000 economists convene to participate in at least one of more than 50 workshops covering issues in labor economics, aging, health and other traditional subjects. This grant provides three years of continued support to NBER for the administration of the Summer Institute. In addition to defraying administrative expenses, funds support special methodological lectures at the Institute, the videotaping of sessions for wider distribution, and scholarships that underwrite the participation of emerging scholars from underrepresented groups.

In 2012, New York University established the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), a new center dedicated to conducting research and education in the emerging field of urban informatics. Using vast data sets and new tools and strategies, CUSP plans to address the critical challenges facing cities, including infrastructure, technology integration, energy efficiency, transportation congestion, public safety, and public health. Funds from this grant provide support for the planning of four major CUSP projects: the Quantified Community project, which aims to fully instrument a section of the city to acquire and use the data collected by sensors as well as other data streams; the Urban Microbiome project, which aims to study the city’s microbiological ecosystems; the Urban Observatory project, which aims to develop and deploy new sensor technologies around the city; and the Data Warehouse project, which aims to construct a pioneering computing center to facilitate the storage, management, curation, analysis, and use of urban informatics data. Grant funds will support planning of these four projects, the production of white papers examining benefits, costs, and potential obstacles, and the production of a detailed project timelines, budgets, and workplans.

This grant supports the research of New York University professor Richard Revesz, who is studying the effects of the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides subsidized flood insurance to at-risk communities in exchange for implementing floodplain management ordinances that would make future construction less vulnerable to the damage caused by flooding. Revesz will investigate a series of interrelated issues, including who primarily benefits from the program, how it affects construction decisions, how to estimate costs and benefits, and what “moral hazard” or “adverse selection” problems the program creates. Particular emphasis will be based on investigating consumer, government and firm behavior in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which caused massive flooding in the New York City metropolitan area in 2012.

This grant supports a joint project by environmental engineer William Nazaroff and atmospheric chemist Allen Goldstein at the University of California, Berkeley to study chemical emissions from human occupancy in indoor spaces. Nazaroff and Goldstein will develop suitable sampling and analysis protocols for simultaneous indoor and outdoor measurements of airborne gaseous and particulate species and measure indoor and outdoor air concentrations in university classrooms, both while vacant and while occupied.  Using these measurements, they will develop models to compute emission rates for a spectrum of organic and inorganic chemicals associated with human occupancy.  The team expects to produce at least two peer-reviewed articles and will present their findings at national and international meetings.  They will also prepare a short report that outlines important research questions and obstacles to be overcome in order to advance our understanding of indoor chemistry.  Grant funds also provide support for the training of one postdoctoral fellow.

Funds from this grant support a project by Jonathan Abbatt, professor of chemistry at the University of Toronto, to conduct preliminary research on the chemistry occurring on indoor surfaces. Indoor surfaces are covered by films of semi-volatile chemical species that arise through the deposition of particulates, oils, and gas-phase oxidation products. This layer is known as the semi-volatile surface layer (SVSL). Abbatt’s research will address three fundamental issues associated with indoor SVSLs. First, what is the chemical composition of indoor SVSL’s, and how is it influenced by deposition time and location? Second, how reactive are indoor SVSL’s as a function of environmental conditions, such as relative humidity? Third, what analytical techniques are well suited for the chemical study of indoor SVSLs?Abbat will conduct studies on both model and genuine surfaces using a variety of analytical techniques including infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and Direct Analysis in Real Time–Mass Spectrometry (DART-MS), a new technology that has not yet been applied to the study of indoor chemistry.

While data science is already contributing to scientific discovery, substantial systemic challenges need to be overcome to maximize its impact on academic research. This is one of three grants, made as part of a five-year, $37.8 million partnership with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, that aim to empower natural and social scientists by strengthening the ability of select U.S. colleges and universities to successfully conduct data-rich and computationally intensive research. Over the next three years, supported campuses will use grant funds to develop meaningful and sustained interactions between disciplinary researchers in the natural and social sciences (e.g. astrophysics, genetics, economics) and researchers in the methodological fields that deal with large scale data collection and analysis (e.g. applied mathematics, statistics, computer science). In addition, supported campuses will establish long term, sustainable career paths for data scientists, and develop an ecosystem of analytical tools and research practices that will facilitate effective research across a range of diverse scientific disciplines. Additional funded activities include holding workshops and training sessions for scientists who work with data, identifying data-science bottlenecks faced by researchers, and disseminating lessons-learned to the academic and research communities.

While data science is already contributing to scientific discovery, substantial systemic challenges need to be overcome to maximize its impact on academic research. This is one of three grants, made as part of a five-year, $37.8 million partnership with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, that aim to empower natural and social scientists by strengthening the ability of select U.S. colleges and universities to successfully conduct data-rich and computationally intensive research. Over the next three years, supported campuses will use grant funds to develop meaningful and sustained interactions between disciplinary researchers in the natural and social sciences (e.g. astrophysics, genetics, economics) and researchers in the methodological fields that deal with large scale data collection and analysis (e.g. applied mathematics, statistics, computer science). In addition, supported campuses will establish long term, sustainable career paths for data scientists, and develop an ecosystem of analytical tools and research practices that will facilitate effective research across a range of diverse scientific disciplines. Additional funded activities include holding workshops and training sessions for scientists who work with data, identifying data-science bottlenecks faced by researchers, and disseminating lessons-learned to the academic and research communities.

While data science is already contributing to scientific discovery, substantial systemic challenges need to be overcome to maximize its impact on academic research. This is one of three grants, made as part of a five-year, $37.8 million partnership with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, that aim to empower natural and social scientists by strengthening the ability of select U.S. colleges and universities to successfully conduct data-rich and computationally intensive research. Over the next three years, supported campuses will use grant funds to develop meaningful and sustained interactions between disciplinary researchers in the natural and social sciences (e.g. astrophysics, genetics, economics) and researchers in the methodological fields that deal with large scale data collection and analysis (e.g. applied mathematics, statistics, computer science). In addition, supported campuses will establish long term, sustainable career paths for data scientists, and develop an ecosystem of analytical tools and research practices that will facilitate effective research across a range of diverse scientific disciplines. Additional funded activities include holding workshops and training sessions for scientists who work with data, identifying data-science bottlenecks faced by researchers, and disseminating lessons-learned to the academic and research communities.

While citizen science projects, crowdsourcing, and other forms of mass collaboration on the Web hold the promise to contribute significantly to scientific research, they often lack adequate institutional or systemic controls to properly mitigate data privacy, cybersecurity, legal, and financial risks. Without such controls in place, government entities or other large institutions are often barred from collaborating with citizen science initiatives, limiting their usefulness and impact. This grant supports efforts by the Commons Lab at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to help reduce these barriers by identifying, assessing and prioritizing the risks associated with mass collaboration projects and developing standards, policies, best practices, and other resources that both government agencies and citizen entrepreneurs can use to work together more effectively. Over the next two years, the Wilson Center will publish two peer-reviewed journal articles on privacy, human subjects, and intellectual property issues; host a roundtable series on cybersecurity; construct an inventory of U.S. government involvement in mass collaboration projects; hold a policy briefing for government agencies; and analyze governance models for mass collaboration projects.

This grant provides three years of continued support to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) for its Project on Energy and National Security, a research initiative that focuses on increasing our understanding of issues at the intersection of energy, economics, and international security. Led by CFR’s Michael Levi, the project will examine a diverse array of issues, including how national oil companies make investment and production decisions, how infrastructure constraints cause divergence in regional oil prices, the economic and security implications of a significant drop in global oil prices, the consequences of the shifting trade in liquid fuels, and evaluating the effectiveness and consequences of international sanctions against petro-states. Additional grant funds support an annual workshop to discuss ongoing projects and findings, and outreach activities to engage policymakers, regulators, thought-leaders, industry, and the public.