Funds from this grant support the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in its efforts to provide data science support to the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO). The RPI team will establish a Deep Carbon Virtual Observatory for community data holdings; provide robust data infrastructure for DCO instrumentation, secretariat, and engagement activities; enable scientific discovery via visualization and analysis; and advance educational aspects of data science among all DCO participants. Planned tasks range from creating tools to capture streams of data from sensors to storing simulation results to creating a DCO-wide bibliographic infrastructure. To maximize the value of the funded activities, the RPI team will look beyond the specific needs of DCO researchers to the larger scientific community and will work closely with the U.S. Geological Survey, National Science Foundation, and counterpart agencies around the world to guide global earth science data infrastructure developments.

Diamonds are the dense quintessence of carbon. Carried near the surface in eruptions of rock from the mantle from below 100 km, diamonds are scientifically significant because they prove the existence of Earth's deep carbon. They also matter because the bubbles or inclusions in them hold precious evidence about Earth at depths that are otherwise inaccessible. This grant funds an initiative led by Steven Shirey of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington to form an international group of diamond researchers that aspires to take diamond research in new directions beyond the traditional bounds of geology, physics, and chemistry. Tapping a group of more than 30 researchers from a dozen nations, the consortium aims to forge a new understanding of the conditions of diamond formation in the deep mantle, how carbon is transported and stored in the mantle now and in the past, and whether a significant reservoir of mantle carbon is primordial or recycled. Grant funds will support the development of consortium organizational infrastructure; the assembly of an internationally accessible diamond reference collection for collaborative research; outreach activities to potential partners in government, academia, and industry; and the creation of information sharing technologies to facilitate cooperation between members. The consortium has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of diamonds and the role they play in the deep mantle and to augment and inform the scientific agenda of the Deep Carbon Observatory.

This grant supports the continued development and expansion of "Software Carpentry", an initiative launched by the Mozilla Foundation to train scientists in best practices for how to use and develop software. Starting with immersive workshops, and following up with online resources and tutorials, the Software Carpentry project provides intensive, hands-on training that allows scientists to thrive in a research environment that is increasingly software-driven. Funds support Mozilla's efforts to expand the Software Carpentry program, conducting workshops and training scientists to design and lead workshops of their own. Additional funds will support the development and launch of a "Webmaking Science Lab", an online portal and set of complementary resources aimed at facilitating the open-source, collaborative, researcher-driven development of scientific software.

By the time it culminates in 2020, the Foundation expects that the Deep Carbon Observatory will involve nearly 1,000 researchers from scores of research and educational institutions, across dozens of countries, spanning a tremendous number of scientific disciplines, including geology, physics, chemistry, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and microbiology. Creating and maintaining a coherent, consistent identity for such a distributed, heterogeneous group and facilitating communications within it is crucial if the DCO is to achieve its goals quickly and efficiently. Funds from this grant support efforts by a team led by Sara Hickox at the University of Rhode Island to manage community-building, communication, education, and outreach activities for the DCO. Informed by experience managing education and outreach for the Census of Marine Life, Hickox and her team will facilitate interaction, knowledge-sharing, and coordination among DCO researchers; communicate common goals, methods, plans, and research agendas; produce educational materials; and coordinate the dissemination of DCO research to media outlets and the public.

Reproducing computational research requires more than having access to lines of code or compiled software. Reproducibility often requires running computations on an identical processor, or using a now defunct operating system. But computer hardware and software become obsolete surprisingly quickly, making the replication of old computational environments difficult or impossible. The advent of cloud computing and virtualization technology has opened a promising opportunity to address this problem. A researcher could preserve not only data and the computational algorithms used to analyze it, but the entire computational environment in which his research was conducted. Future researchers could then use virtualization to precisely replicate that environment, whatever hardware changes the future brings. The power of virtualization makes it not implausible to envision a library of virtual machines simulating every physical computer across the history of computing. This grant supports a project led by Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Mahadev Satyanarayanan and university librarian Gloriana St. Clair to build just such a library, called the "Open Virtual Machine Image Library", known as Olive. Funds will support the technical development of the OLIVE platform, initiatives to reduce the resources required to run archived virtual machines, and the development of a business plan and long-term sustainability strategy.

This grant to the American Film Institute (AFI), one of the Foundation's six film school partners, supports continued efforts to encourage the next generation of filmmakers to incorporate scientific themes and characters in their work, and to challenge stereotypes about scientists and engineers through film. AFI provides a yearly $10,000 prize awarded to the best science or technology-themed screenplay written by an AFI student; an annual $25,000 production award to a science-themed film to help defray production costs; and an annual $35,000 tuition scholarship to a filmmaker with a background in science and a passion for pursuing science-themed filmmaking as a career. Additional funds provide students with expert science to ensure the accuracy of scientific content, and a seminar series where practicing scientists discuss the latest research and discoveries and the potential they hold for narrative filmmaking.