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: Wikimedia Foundation
    amount: $3,000,000
    city: San Francisco, CA
    year: 2011

    To help Wikipedia develop and sustain its educational mission while constantly improving quality, diversity, and access to knowledge for people everywhere

    • Program Technology
    • Sub-program Universal Access to Knowledge
    • Investigator Erik Moller

    Funds from this grant provide continued support to the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and operates Wikipedia, in its efforts to professionalize and sustain itself organizationally while improving the quality of Wikipedia articles. Wikimedia's ambitious goals in the next five years are to increase the number of people served to one billion; to increase the number of articles to 50 million; to review 25% of all articles to insure accurate, quality information; to double the number of editors to 200,000; and to double the number of women editors and contributors from the developing world. Funds will support efforts to improve article quality by partnering with professors and universities and encouraging students to create or improve articles in their area of expertise. Also supported through this grant is a Wikimedia project to convert its most talented volunteers into paid fellows through a fellowship program focused on research, existing program work, and new high impact work. Wikimedia is also undertaking an aggressive, high profile campaign to attract more women contributors. Finally, Wikipedia will use some of the Foundation's support to develop its relationship with the cultural sector by working with its 30 worldwide chapters to foster partnerships with galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and educational institutions.

    To help Wikipedia develop and sustain its educational mission while constantly improving quality, diversity, and access to knowledge for people everywhere

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  • grantee: Tribeca Film Institute
    amount: $330,700
    city: New York, NY
    year: 2011

    To hold the triennial Sloan Film Summit, developing the community and highlighting the achievements of Sloan's Film Program including six film schools, four screenplay development programs, three film festivals, and associated film and theater artists

    • Program Public Understanding
    • Sub-program Film
    • Investigator Beth Janson

    This grant to the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) provides funds for the fifth triennial Sloan Film Summit in New York City in 2011. The summit is an important community-building event that brings together prize-winning students, faculty, and administration from the Foundation's six film school partners as well as screenwriters, filmmakers, and administrators from Sloan's four screenplay development and film festival partners: Sundance, Tribeca, Hamptons, and Film Independent. Funded summit activities include an opening night reception; a screening of award-winning shorts from each film school; screenplay readings of award-winning scripts with accomplished actors; panels on science, film, and new media that bring together notable scientists and filmmakers; a meeting of Film program administrators; and an industry meetings where filmmakers meet and pitch their films to leading members of the film industry. Among the key materials that will come out of the summit are a compilation DVD of award-winning shorts and a hard book and an iPhone/iPad application that lists all the screenplay and film projects of the past three years with bios and contact information for the filmmakers to be distributed to agents, managers, and development executives.

    To hold the triennial Sloan Film Summit, developing the community and highlighting the achievements of Sloan's Film Program including six film schools, four screenplay development programs, three film festivals, and associated film and theater artists

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  • grantee: Columbia University
    amount: $150,108
    city: New York, NY
    year: 2011

    For a pilot production grant to encourage the next generation of filmmakers to incorporate science and technology themes into storytelling for the World Wide Web

    • Program Public Understanding
    • Sub-program Film
    • Investigator Evangeline Morphos

    This 18-month grant to Columbia University, one of the Foundation's six film school partners, will fund a pilot project which aims to encourage science and technology storytelling through the World Wide Web. Guided by Columbia faculty, film students will experiment with the possibilities of new media by creating a 20-40 minute web series, told in three to eight minute narrative episodes (webisodes) with science and technology themes and characters that will reach new audiences. The production awards are open to Columbia students in the third to fifth year who have finished their courses, previously shot a completed film, and have exhibited innovative approaches to the challenges of web storytelling. Five teams will be awarded grants of $14,000 each to work on individual webisodes that will form part of a single web series. Students will work closely with film faculty and a science advisor, and grant funds will be paid out in stages based on adherence to a strict production schedule. Once finished, the web series will be entered into festivals and new media competitions, released on the internet, and distributed virally.

    For a pilot production grant to encourage the next generation of filmmakers to incorporate science and technology themes into storytelling for the World Wide Web

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  • grantee: University of Washington
    amount: $671,781
    city: Seattle, WA
    year: 2011

    To assess improvements resulting from and analyzing data collected by the Project to Assess Climate in Engineering (PACE)

    • Program Higher Education
    • Investigator Suzanne Brainard

    In October 2006, the Foundation approved a five-year grant to the University of Washington to enable Suzanne Brainard and her colleagues to assess the climate for women and underrepresented minority undergraduates in engineering schools across the country. Twenty-one engineering schools fully participated in the climate assessment-the Project to Assess Climate in Engineering (PACE)- 16 at public universities and 5 at private universities, accounting for 18 percent of the full-time engineering enrollments nationwide. Of these, 15 created and implemented action plans to make improvements based on the recommendations of the study. Funds from this grant will support the continuation PACE for three purposes: 1. Resurvey students in the 21 schools, compare the new responses to the pre-intervention responses, and analyze the results in light of the particular interventions made by each school. 2. Conduct focus groups involving approximately 40 students on each campus that administers the resurvey. 3. Code and analyze rich transcripts of student interviews that were conducted during the PACE project.

    To assess improvements resulting from and analyzing data collected by the Project to Assess Climate in Engineering (PACE)

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  • grantee: University of Colorado, Boulder
    amount: $124,121
    city: Boulder, CO
    year: 2011

    To conduct a pilot study to examine the diversity and structure of bacterial communities in kitchens

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Microbiology of the Built Environment
    • Investigator Noah Fierer

    This grant will fund the efforts by Noah Fierer, a young researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, to examine the diversity and structure of microbial communities in kitchens. Fierer-in collaboration with his colleague Rob Knight-plans to collect samples from twelve residential kitchens to determine the geographical distribution of microbial communities and to track the movements of the communities across kitchen surfaces. He plans to collect samples from a number of kitchen surfaces before and after meal preparation and collect samples from a variety of foods that were used to prepare the meal. DNA will be isolated from the samples and then amplified, sequenced, and analyzed using bio-informatic tools.

    To conduct a pilot study to examine the diversity and structure of bacterial communities in kitchens

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  • grantee: National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, Inc.
    amount: $3,768,800
    city: White Plains, NY
    year: 2011

    To fund new obligations in the Minority Ph.D. Program and the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership program from July 1, 2011 to July 1, 2012

    • Program Higher Education
    • Initiative Minority Ph.D.
    • Investigator Aileen Walter

    This grant to the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) will fund new scholarship obligations in the Foundation's Minority Ph.D. program (MPHD) and the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP) that are expected to be incurred between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012. NACME, the Foundation's longtime agent in administering these programs, receives and processes scholarship applications, selects students for scholarships, administers the awards, and supports recruitment efforts by faculty at participating colleges and universities. Funds from this grant will support 93 scholarships for minority students entering the Minority Ph.D. program in AY 2011-12 and 26 scholarships for students entering the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership in AY 2011-12.

    To fund new obligations in the Minority Ph.D. Program and the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership program from July 1, 2011 to July 1, 2012

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  • grantee: Museum of Mathematics
    amount: $401,461
    city: New York, NY
    year: 2011

    To equip science festivals with portable, interactive, and hands-on mathematical activities

    • Program Public Understanding
    • Sub-program New Media
    • Investigator Glen Whitney

    Each year since 2009, visitors to the World Science Festival's Street Fair in New York City have experienced the Math Midway, a large and crowded carnival filled with mathematical toys and activities such as square-wheeled bicycles you can ride on a cycloidal track and plastic polyhedral solids that reveal surprising cross sections when you shine laser light through them. The Math Midway is one of many successful components unique to the World Science Festival, which the Sloan Foundation helped launch though its program on the Public Understanding of Science and Technology. Most science festivals struggle to present any kind of compelling mathematical content at all. The creators of Math Midway would now like to share what they have built, as well as what they have learned, with science festival planners and participants throughout the country. Funds from this grant will support efforts by Museum of Mathematics founder Glen Whitney to develop up to 20 portable versions of the Math Midway exhibitions that can travel to science and mathematics festivals across the country. The Science Festival Alliance, a Sloan Foundation grantee, has already arranged for these exhibits to be displayed and tested by organizations operating under its umbrella, including science festivals in San Diego, Philadelphia, Harlem, Cambridge, and the Bay Area. The project will also train local mathematicians to staff these exhibitions. Independent evaluation of the construction, deployment, and reception of the first six such kits is also part of the project plan under this grant, and will help clarify what works and what next steps might make sense going forward to enhance public engagement with mathematics.

    To equip science festivals with portable, interactive, and hands-on mathematical activities

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  • grantee: Michigan State University
    amount: $419,203
    city: East Lansing, MI
    year: 2011

    To fill a gap in research by investigating how the "employment environment" promotes or impedes the ability of individuals to remain at work past traditional ages of retirement

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Working Longer
    • Investigator Peter Berg

    Much of the empirical research on aging and work actually focuses on aging and "end of work"-retirement. Significantly less research has been conducted on how the non-financial, as well as financial, conditions of work affect the decision to stay in the labor force beyond conventional retirement. To address this, Michican State University professor Peter Berg and his colleagues Chris Ruhm and Mary Hamman intend to assess how the "employment environment," defined to include characteristics of the job, employer, and the industry, facilitates or impedes individuals' abilities to work past conventional retirement age. To conduct their analysis, Berg and his team will rely on a uniquely rich German dataset, which includes detailed questions regarding the employment environment and contains extensive data on such relevant factors as staffing patterns, scheduling, hours of work, modifications to jobs demands, financial information, and turnover. Funds from this grant will support this research. The results of this study will likely shed light on the kinds of variables that could in the future be included in U.S. survey instruments, such as the Health and Retirement Study and could be important in identifying what U.S. employers might consider doing in order to keep employees working past age 65.

    To fill a gap in research by investigating how the "employment environment" promotes or impedes the ability of individuals to remain at work past traditional ages of retirement

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  • grantee: RAND Corporation
    amount: $609,511
    city: Santa Monica, CA
    year: 2011

    To understand the role of employers in facilitating or impeding continued employment of older workers following onset of a work-limiting disability

    • Program Research
    • Sub-program Working Longer
    • Investigator Nicole Maestas

    The viability of the current Social Security system and its need for reform has been a topic of recent public and political concern. What has not been getting comparable public or political attention, however, is the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program, which provides benefits to American workers who suffer from disabilities. SSDI's eligibility rules act as a major disincentive for continued employment for those applying for its benefits, since they provide income support and Medicare coverage to individuals with work-limiting disabilities only if they do not engage in substantial gainful employment. Yet despite this disincentive, some disabled workers continue working in some capacity. Funds from this grant will support research by the RAND Corporation to advance our understanding of how employer practices affect workers' continued employment after the onset of a work-limiting disability. Questions to be addressed by this research include: 1. How does workplace accommodation (with regard to how, when, and where work is done) affect the duration of continuing employment by an older worker following onset of disability? 2. How does health insurance coverage (availability, continuity, and source) and pension coverage (type and eligibility ages) affect the duration of continuing employment by an older worker following onset of disability? This project will rely on the longitudinal, cross-sectional data of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which has detailed questions on health insurance, as well as employer accommodations, including work schedules and work modifications.

    To understand the role of employers in facilitating or impeding continued employment of older workers following onset of a work-limiting disability

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  • grantee: University of Alaska, Anchorage
    amount: $144,000
    city: Anchorage, AK
    year: 2011

    To fund for an additional three years the recruitment and retention portion of the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership program at the University of Alaska

    • Program Higher Education
    • Investigator Herb Schroeder

    This grant provides partial support to the University of Alaska, Anchorage for activities designed to recruit and retain indigenous graduate students in STEM disciplines as part of the university's participation in the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP) . This is the second three-year grant to the University of Alaska fund these activities. Principal Investigator Herb Schroeder and his staff had considerable success during their first grant, recruiting 26 students compared to an expectation of 18. Attrition has also been low, with the Alaska programs having lost only one M.S. and one Ph.D. student so far. Schroeder expects to recruit seven new students annually over the next three years. Some of the activities supported through this grant include cross-cultural training for faculty and staff who work with native graduate students, weekly team meetings, a recitation session devoted to strengthening the academic skills need to successfully complete graduate work, and workshops for helping students with professional networking, grant writing, and serving as an effective teaching assistant.

    To fund for an additional three years the recruitment and retention portion of the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership program at the University of Alaska

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