This grant supports an annual $150,000 First Feature Production Award at New York University Tisch School of the Arts (NYU) to provide students the opportunity to produce and release their first full-length feature film that dramatizes scientific and technological themes or characters. Students submit one-page pitches for science films annually. A dozen quarter finalists are selected to write step-by-step breakdowns of their films, and from this group, six semi-finalists are chosen to meet with scientists and film faculty to improve the science content, narrative, and design of their films, before submitting revised treatments. In the finalist stage, three students are selected and awarded $5,000 each to develop their treatments into full-scale feature screenplays. Finally, one winner is selected and receives a $150,000 production award to produce their first feature film.

This grant supports Film Independent (FIND) to host the 2025 Sloan Film Summit, a convening of all Alfred P. Sloan Foundation film and media-related grantees held every three years, from film schools to film festivals and from film development and film distribution partners to theater, gaming, and social media partners. At the summit, FIND will highlight 25 years of the Sloan Foundation’s film program, looking back at where the program started and what has changed in the science and film landscape, as well as the media and broader culture. In addition to anticipated attendance by 200 members of the Sloan film community—including all the winning screenwriters, filmmakers, episodic writers, gamers, and animators from the past three years—FIND will invite members of the general public to participate in several public-facing events, adding an estimated 1000 attendees.  Funded activities include introductions and updates from Sloan award recipients; case studies of successful collaborations between filmmakers and scientists; networking opportunities that connect filmmakers with scientists, agents, casting directors, distributors, film festivals, production companies, entrepreneurs, and executives; live reading of excerpts from Sloan-winning screenplays; panels that will feature scientists expounding on underappreciated scientific stories and discoveries, and keynote addresses.

Compartmentalization is a key feature of living systems. Cells are separated from their environment by a membrane, and intracellular compartments are widely used to carry out the biochemistry upon which life relies. Biomolecular condensates are transient intracellular compartments formed when molecules within the cytoplasm undergo a condensing phase transition. The transition produces a region within the cytoplasm that’s typically denser and/or more viscous than the surrounding fluid and the transition is often referred to as liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). Molecules co-located within a condensate can more readily react with one another and biologists have learned that the formation and eventual dissolution of biomolecular condensates is ubiquitous across life. While much has been learned about the functions facilitated by these transient organelles, there are many open questions about how the basic physics of LLPS is impacted by the complex, heterogeneous cellular environment within which LLPS occurs. This grant funds work by Jennifer Ross and Jennifer Schwarz, professors of experimental and theoretical physics, respectively, at Syracuse University to study how two specific features of the intracellular microenvironment—the presence of an enzyme-driven ‘active bath’ that modifies the local energy landscape, and the presence of viscoelastic polymers that modify the local entropy landscape—influence the formation and dissolution of protein condensates. The phrase ‘active bath’ refers to a fluid that has been perturbed from its equilibrium thermal state by some type of activity that leads to fluid regions with local fluctuations (e.g. position fluctuations of water molecules) that exceed those associated with the fluid’s overall (equilibrium) thermal state. In this project, the relevant activity is ‘background’ enzyme reactions; chemical reactions that do not directly involve the proteins that condense during LLPS, but which may nonetheless influence LLPS. The cellular entropy feature to be explored by Ross and Schwarz is the presence of a cytoskeleton, a network of viscoelastic (i.e. both viscous and elastic) protein filaments that act to constrain the motion of molecules within a cell via crowding. The team will create cytoskeletal-like networks of varying density and stiffness by using the cytoskeletal biopolymers actin and tubulin. Experiments will vary both the overall polymer density and the actin-to-tubulin ratio. Temperature and condensing-polymer concentration are two key parameters that will be used to experimentally characterize the LLPS phase transition, and Ross and Schwarz plan to study two types of condensing proteins and—for each type of condensing protein—two types of phase transition.

This grant supports efforts by  Thomas Preston, a Professor of Chemistry and of Atmospheric & Ocean Sciences at McGill University, to study whether and how aerosol droplets accelerate chemical reactions important to the rise of life on early Earth. Professor Preston and colleagues plan to bring a new level of experimental control and chemical analysis to Origin-of-Life (OoL) droplet-chemistry studies by containing droplets in a ‘trap’ that allows individual droplets to be studied for long periods of time, and by applying two powerful spectroscopic techniques (Raman spectroscopy and mass spectrometry) to study in-droplet chemistry. In-droplet chemistry may have contributed to the rise of life on Earth by accelerating various chemical reactions. This ‘acceleration of chemistry’ is important to origins-of-life theories because as chemical reaction times increase, yields become vanishingly small, and thus not useful for understanding abiogenesis. It has been reported that confinement inside droplets can accelerate chemical reactions by a factor of up to one million, but well controlled experiments supporting such claims are rare and there is considerable uncertainty about the mechanisms responsible for any enhanced chemical reactivity. Preston and his team will use use two levitation techniques – one based on light (optical trap) and another based on an electric field (electrodynamic trap) – to study individual droplets for long periods of time (hours to days) and under  a variety of well controlled conditions, to shed light on whether and how droplet environments accelerate chemical reactivity. Factors to be controlled and studied include droplet size (and thus surface-to-volume ratio) and the impact on droplet chemistry of photoelectric and electrical field excitation. Studying droplets for relatively long periods of time will allow the team to deploy highly informative measurement techniques such as Raman spectroscopy (probes molecular bonding) and mass spectrometry (information on molecular species) and to do so in a time-resolved manner.  Two different areas of droplet chemistry will be investigated: hydrogen cyanide chemistry and phosphorylation reactions, each of which include reactions essential to origin of life studies, including amide bond formation, nucleoside formation, polysaccharide synthesis, and ion-phosphate attachment. 

Biomolecular condensates are transient organelles that are ubiquitous across life, and which are widely used -for instance- to host intracellular chemistry.  The ubiquity of transient compartmentalization hints at an evolutionarily earlier time when complex chemistry and compartmentalization coupled to evolve in tandem. This grant funds Rebecca Schulman, a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Elisa Franco, a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California Los Angeles, and Deborah Fygenson, a Professor of Physics at the University of California Santa Barbara, to conduct a series of in vitro studies to improve our understanding of systems where chemical reactions are coupled to condensation dynamics. What are the elementary components of, and the fundamental principles governing, a plausibly-origin-of-life-relevant ‘dynamic soup’ whereby chemistry and compartmentalization couple to achieve biological function? Schulman, et. al. plan to explore this question by studying how chemical reactions affect condensate (or droplet) volume and the dynamics of droplet size change.  They’ll then leverage that knowledge to achieve sustained cycles of condensate creation, growth, and dissolution over a range of spatial and temporal scales. Under project phase 1, the team will measure the phase behavior of various condensing nucleic acid (NA) polymers as a function of the concentration of several ‘effector’ molecules that are designed to modify the condensate state. The team seeks to determine the steady state properties of a condensing-molecule / effector system defined by a fixed concentration of effector molecules. Doing so will help them interpret the effects of rapid changes in, and non-uniform distributions of, effectors produced or consumed by various chemical reactions. Under phase 2, the team will explore whether it’s possible to achieve stabilized micron-scale condensates by coupling chemical reactions and condensation. The strategy relies on two key ideas. First, that the chemistry of interest should interfere with the tendency of droplet molecules to aggregate since this will inhibit the growth of an existing droplet. The PIs will exploit chemistry that produces growth inhibiting effectors (RNA polymers). Second, the growth inhibiting chemistry should become more effective with increased droplet size since this amounts to size-stabilizing negative feedback. The team will leverage in-droplet chemistry to synthesize the growth inhibiting RNA polymers and they expect that these polymers will be more effective in large droplets because it takes longer on average to diffuse out of large droplets than small droplets. Under phase 3, the researchers aim to build reaction-condensate systems that exhibit sustained cycles of droplet emergence, growth, and dissolution. The team will pursue two strategies. First, they’ll use a so-called ‘transcriptional oscillator’ positioned in the condensate environment (the surrounding dilute phase) to chemically synthesize a droplet-growth-inhibiting (RNA-based) effector. Second, they’ll implement a chemical feedback system featuring a growth inhibiting effector that does not inhibit growth until it diffuses out of a droplet and chemically reacts with certain molecules in the environmental. If successful, the project will provide insight into how cells exploit couplings between chemical and condensation dynamics to implement biological function, while also establishing a toolset that allows researchers to build information-bearing entities that exhibit sustained cycles of formation, growth, and dissolution.

Across many experimental settings, from precision medicine to science funding, different interventions may be much more effective for some individuals than others. In such cases, both researchers and decision makers would like to know more than the “average treatment effect.” Doing the most good with limited resources can also require targeting interventions toward those who will benefit from them most—if only we could identify those subgroups in advance, or, in other words, if only we could estimate “personalized treatment effects” (PTEs). Consider a school district deeply concerned about devasting learning losses during the pandemic. Preliminary studies indicate that high-dosage tutoring (HDT) is a costly but highly effective form of small group instruction that can help teachers double or triple mathematics learning each year. Another effective yet lower-cost option is to replace some in-person instruction with time on a high-quality computer-assisted-learning platform. This treatment is called “sustainable high-dosage tutoring” (SHDT). On average, students seem to benefit from SHDT as much as HDT. The problem is that certain students hardly benefit from the technology-assisted component at all, and thus should be treated with the more expensive high-dosage tutoring. Personalized treatment effect estimation allows the school district to identify these students. Jens Ludwig at the University of Chicago seeks to advance the estimation of PTEs when data is obtained from large-scale field experiments. His approach builds on fundamental techniques developed by Sloan grantee Susan Athey, whose “random forest” algorithm carries out machine learning by exploring many different “decision trees.” Ludwig will extend these methods, leveraging recent experimental data involving eight U.S. school districts where a total of 20,000 students were randomly assigned to a control group, to high-dosage tutoring (HDT), or to sustainable high-dosage tutoring (SHDT). Ludwig’s team will develop PTE estimation methods for identifying which of the variables observable in advance best predict how students vary in their treatment response to HDT and SHDT. They will devise and test practical rules for helping schools assign different types of students to HDT or SHDT based on these individual characteristics. This personalized approach has the potential to maximize learning gains and optimize resource allocation, offering a cost-effective solution to reversing pandemic learning loss in STEM education and allowing the same tutoring program budget to benefit a greater number of students The project will also produce a practical guide for researchers on PTE estimation methods, helping to ensure robust application of this methodology across other contexts outside of STEM education.

Private equity (PE) firms buy companies they can reconfigure and then sell at a profit. Across various sectors, some of these firms have a reputation for saddling the businesses they purchase with debt, replacing management, prioritizing short-term value over long-run sustainability, and then flipping what is left as soon as they can. In the U.S. childcare market, PE firms now own nine of the 11 largest for-profit chains. These have done quite well financially even as smaller community-based childcare providers have struggled in the wake of COVID-19. New research documenting higher mortality rates and lower care quality in PE-owned nursing homes raises concerns about what might be in store for the even more lightly regulated market for childcare. On the one hand, PE investment could increase quality and maintain reasonable prices that attract consumers and enhance profitability. Or PE may result in rising prices, quality reductions, and steep charges for the privilege of being managed by the firm. Without good data on childcare markets, most public discourse is based on anecdotes and speculation. Chris Herbst (Arizona State University) and Jessica Brown (University of South Carolina) will compile new data and conduct four academic studies analyzing PE’s impact on the market for childcare. Their first paper will identify PE-owned childcare facilities using business registry data and document how they compare to non-PE-owned centers. The second will examine what happens to individual enterprises after they are acquired by PE in terms of prices, wages, employment, and performance on state inspections. Using structural estimation methods, the third and fourth papers will explore how PE entry affects both local childcare centers not owned by PE as well as public early education providers like Head Start. By demonstrating the utility of new data and methods, this work will jumpstart the conversation about childcare management in academic circles and inspire other researchers to begin work on this topic as well.

This grant provides three years of continuing support for a program at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinematic Arts to award production, screenwriting, and animation awards to student filmmakers who explore scientific and technological themes and characters. USC will make two production awards, two screenwriting awards, and one animation award annually to student filmmakers each year for a total of 15 awards over three years. The screenwriting award is offered to exceptional feature-length or episodic television scripts that accurately depict scientific stories or themes. The production award provides funds to produce a short film that centers science and technology themes or characters. The animation award supports the development and production of animated short films with science and technology themes. Grant funding also includes support for annual “Sloan Evenings,” which involve screenings of completed student Sloan films followed by discussions with scientists and filmmakers, and annual science seminars, which brings in scientists to talk to students about recent scientific studies, findings, controversies, discoveries, and other events that may inform and inspire filmmakers to further explore science as a theme in their filmmaking.