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.

This grant provides three years of support to the University of California, Los Angeles' School of Theater, Film and Television, one of the Foundation's six film school partners, for its continuing 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. UCLA sponsors a number of initiatives to expose film students to the narrative possibilities of exploring science and technology in their work. Grant funds support an annual, full-day colloquium brings together top UCLA science faculty from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds to lecture on interesting new developments in science and technology; two annual $10,000 screenwriting prizes to be awarded to the best science-themed scripts, an annual $30,000 directing fellowship awarded to the best science themed film project; and funds providing science mentors to ensure the accuracy of science-themed film content and to mentor students as they research and write scripts. The program promises to continue to build on the UCLA program's success in building a cadre of talented young filmmakers eager to explore scientific themes and characters in their careers.

Though studies indicate that pedagogy that incorporates "active learning" results in significantly higher student outcomes, the traditional "professors lecture, students listen" teaching format remains stubbornly predominant in STEM higher education. This grant funds a project by the Bay View Alliance (BVA), a consortium of seven large public flagship universities in the U.S. and Canada, to jointly study the features of institutional and faculty culture that inhibit the spread of new pedagogical techniques and approaches inside colleges and universities. The BVA will design, implement, and then evaluate a series of small interventions at member colleges aimed at increasing our understanding of how university administrators can best support improvements in student learning. Grant funds support the development of the administrative and organizational infrastructure necessary to manage the project; the creation of shared protocols for the conduct of research; the design, implementation and analysis of interventions; and the dissemination of results and findings.

Funds from this grant support a project by the Business-Higher Education Forum, an innovative regional partnership between industry and academia in the state of Maryland, to further develop and expand an undergraduate cybersecurity curriculum across the University of Maryland system that provides students with the skills and training sought by regional employers. A pioneering exercise in collaborative curriculum development, the project has the potential to serve as a model for how educators and private industry can effectively collaborate to maximize the value of university education for students. Funds from Sloan will support the creation of the USM Undergraduate Cybersecurity Network to coordinate curriculum, internships, advanced degrees, and job opportunities in the Washington, D.C.-Maryland region. Joint efforts will allow the collection and analysis of student academic performance, demographic, and employment data from all institutions with respect to initial enrollment, early stage persistence, transfer and articulation, declared majors, graduates, and number of job offers; data on number and involvement of industry professionals in curriculum development and internship responsibilities; and the use of the data to inform curriculum and pedagogy. It is expected that program capacity will be expanded so that 585 additional undergraduates enroll in cybersecurity programs by 2015 and 20 percent more bachelor's degrees are earned in cyber-related fields by 2018. In addition, the program will be designed with a focus on increasing the recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented minorities into the cybersecurity program.

This grant supports efforts by Jill Banfield of the University of California, Berkeley and Michael Morowitz, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center 's Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh to study how premature infants-born sterile, separated from their mothers, and isolated in neonatal intensive care units" (NICUs)-nevertheless develop intestinal microbiota necessary for normal human digestion. Preliminary studies suggest that infants acquire the needed microbes from microbes in the NICU, and Banfield, Morowitz and their team will explore that hypothesis. They will conduct comprehensive, next generation high resolution ecological surveys of hospital air and surfaces to link them with microbial colonization of the infant GI tract. The project will involve building a mathematical model for simulating microbial transport within the NICU, which will be used to interpret collected date and make predictions about the efficacy of future interventions.

Funds from this grant support a research project by University of Chicago microbiologist Jack Gilbert and Chicago surgeon John Alverdy, to study microbial populations at a newly constructed hospital at the University of Chicago. By studying the characteristics of microbial populations before and after the hospital becomes operational, the project will shed light on how the introduction of doctors, nurses, patients, and visitors, staff change the microbes that live and thrive in hospital environments. Using a multidisciplinary team that includes microbial ecologists architects, building scientists, statisticians, and epidemiologists, Gilbert and Alverdy will take nearly 13,000 microbial samples and analyze them to investigate whether microbial community structure on hospital surfaces can be predicted by human demographics, physical conditions and/or building materials; how patient-room microbiota is influenced by the current patient, his length of stay, and/or the introduction of a new patient; how the colonization of surfaces by pathogens of surfaces is sped or impeded by existing microbial communities on those surfaces, and how the rate of change in a microbial community is affected by building materials and human use. The team plans to publish at least three articles on their research in peer-reviewed journals, and their findings may be of use to the health care community, leading to better patient care through crafting a more complete understanding of how microorganisms spread through hospitals.

This grant funds research investigating demand for older workers in labor markets and how the behavior of firms affect older worker's decisions to work beyond conventional retirement age. Led by Till Von Wachter, previously of Columbia and now at UCLA and RAND, David Card of UC Berkeley, and Lars Vilhuber of the U.S. Census Bureau, the research team will analyze the role of firms in labor force transitions of older workers in the United States, with a comparative analysis to firm behaviors in Germany. Their research addresses four critical questions. "First, do common firm-level events, such as mass layoffs and plant closings, contribute significantly to observed retirement rates? Second, is there a significant difference in the rate of early retirement among firms (net of worker characteristics)? Third, do differences in firm-specific retirement rates correlate with more commonly studied firm-level differences in wages and productivity, and what do the results imply for the sources of firm-level differences in retirement rates? Fourth, is the role of firms in retirement similar in Germany?" In addition to providing valuable insights, the effort promise to draw scholarly attention to the need for additional research on the demand side of the older worker labor market.

This grant funds the production of an interactive new eBook, Innocence, Guilt and Science. Authored by New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer and produced in conjunction with the Innocent Project, the book will detail some of the more than 250 death row convictions and life sentences the Innocent Project has helped overturn through the use of DNA evidence. The book will explore how cutting edge advances in genomics is affecting the judicial system, including how they sheds light on the subjective distortions of more traditional forensic "science" based on perception and memory. Innocence Guilt and Science will also push the envelope of eBook technology, integrating traditional written narrative with photos and court documents, in-depth video clips, links to online resources, and interactive games that will allow readers to explore scientific themes. Innocence, Guilt and Science will provide the public with a deeper understanding of the science of DNA testing and how it is used to identify individuals; and also with a greater grasp of the science of perception, cognition, and the many distortions that our memories introduce.

The "Energy Efficiency Paradox" refers to the stubborn fact that energy efficiency improvements judged cost effective in theory nevertheless fail to find wide adoption in practice. Surprisingly few people, for example, weatherize their homes even when given all sorts of information and incentives. Though many researchers have studied aspects of the paradox, no serious, concerted research initiative to understand it has been conducted. This grant supports a project by economists Robert Stavins and Richard Newell to lay the groundwork for such a comprehensive initiative. Stavins and Newell will conduct a review of the relevant economic literature on the Energy Efficiency Paradox, hold a conference, publish a monograph, and provide other scholarly infrastructure, including a shared, online, and annotated bibliographic database of relevant research.