Available energy and environment data can be rather siloed, with datasets from different federal and state agencies difficult to link with one another due to differences in what data is collected, how it is structured, what formats are used to store it, and what metadata is attached. Connecting such disparate datasets so that they can be jointly and meaningfully analyzed represents a significant and time-consuming effort for researchers, particularly those from different disciplines who want to address broader questions of climate change, environmental justice, social welfare, or public policy. This grant supports a team of multidisciplinary team of social scientists across multiple institutions, led by Jonathan Fisk, to begin to address this issue.  Funds will support a broad initial survey of researchers across a wide range of social science disciplines to identify the most used and useful data sources in this area, gain insight into the questions researchers are attempting to answer, and understand the barriers they face in linking different datasets.  The survey will then lead to a workshop where survey responses will inform discussion of where the most pressing needs for data integration are and development of a plan for addressing them. The workshop will then be followed by an iterative process of researcher consultation that ensures future data integration plans continue to be tightly bound to researchers’ needs.

Gordon Research Conferences (GRCs) are a series of week-long interdisciplinary conferences focusing on advancing cutting-edge research across biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering, bringing together early-career and more established researchers. The purpose of these meetings is to share early-stage results and provide networking and collaboration opportunities among the participants. Many GRCs are preceded by a two-day graduate student seminar held the weekend before the conference to engage early-career researchers. This grant supports the fourth in a biennial series of conferences on Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) taking place this fall, which will bring together scientists from multiple disciplines to share novel research about developments related to removing carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere. Grant funds will cover registration and travel costs for up to 20 early-career researchers, including 10 from the United States and 10 from other countries, who will each attend the week-long CCUS GRC and the preceding seminar.

Most private sector software development is informed by user experience (UX) designers who work to ensure products provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users, but UX is treated as an afterthought, if considered at all, within open source scientific software. The result is that much open source scientific software with graphical user interfaces is counterintuitive and difficult to use, with predictable effects on adoption. This grant funds work by Jin Guo of McGill University and Jinghui Cheng of Polytechnique Montrйal to develop and test techniques and tools to facilitate better integration of design considerations into open source software development. An essential feature of successful UX design processes is understanding user needs and soliciting and evaluating their feedback iteratively. Facilitating such activities can be difficult, particularly on open source projects where the management team is stretched thin. Drawing on their familiarity with natural language processing and human-computer interaction, Guo and Cheng will attempt to streamline user participation in UX design through three streams of research. The first will be on tools that provide prompts, suggestions and frameworks to users to reduce vagueness and ambiguity in their design feedback, clearly demarcate problems from proposed solutions, and help ensure user comments are maximally useful to developers. The second will focus on tools that use natural language recognition to analyze, summarize, and synthesize user comments, allowing the development team to digest and prioritize feedback effectively and efficiently. The third will focus on tools that engage users in contributing pre-implementation design artifacts, like wireframes, sketches, and interface mockups.

Introductory undergraduate courses play an outsized role in steering women and students of color out of STEM majors. One recent study, reported in Talking about Leaving Revisited, found that 35% of all decisions to switch out of a STEM major could be attributed to these courses, with women leaving at significantly higher rates than men. What is less well understood, however, is what it is about these courses that cause such differential responses across race and gender. This grant funds a team led by Anne-Barrie Hunter at the University of Colorado, Boulder, to conduct a large ethnographic study of introductory STEM courses across six U.S. college campuses. Focusing on courses in mathematics, computer science, chemistry, and biology with high DFWI (grades D, F, withdrawal, or incomplete) rates, the research team will conduct 240 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with professors, administrators, instructional staff, and teaching assistants and then link the information collected with university data on student performance. Interviews will be structured to examine the role that individual—as well as departmental and institutional—incentives, beliefs, attitudes, and practices have on student outcomes with an emphasis on teaching practices. The ethnography promises to yield important, actionable insights into the mechanisms that lead to differential racial and gendered outcomes among STEM students.

This grant provides support for a series of interrelated activities designed to support and strengthen the economics department at Howard University, the nation’s leading producer of Black PhDs in economics and the only Historically Black College or University that offers a doctorate in economics. Over the three-year grant period, funds will be used to increase Howard’s capacity to recruit, educate, and graduate economics students through providing fellowship support for undergraduate students, doctoral students, and a post-doctoral researcher. In addition, grant funds will be used to augment and strengthen the resources of the Howard economics department, including an upgrade to the department’s computer lab and seminar facilities, the launch of a faculty development program, and the creation of a mentoring program that pairs students with dedicated faculty mentors.

This grant provides partial support for a study by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that will report on the current expert consensus about the influence of systemic racism in academia on the careers of individuals belonging to racial and ethnic groups historically underrepresented in the scientific, technical, and medical workforce. The Academies will assemble a study committee of top experts to commission papers that synthesize the collective body of scholarship on this issue; develop practical, evidence-based recommendations to address the challenges the scholarship identifies; surface gaps in our understanding; and recommend an ambitious research agenda aimed to fill those gaps. This 21-month consensus study is a partial response to a request made by the Chairwoman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Congresswoman Edie Bernice Johnson. The Academies will plan a diverse variety of outreach and dissemination activities designed to ensure the report and its recommendations are circulated widely among key stakeholders and decision-makers inside and outside academia.

The National Book Foundation (NBF), which has for 70 years bestowed the prestigious National Book Awards, is launching a new “Science + Literature” program that aims to identify and honor outstanding books that deepen readers’ understanding of science and technology, that celebrates and contributes to the diversity of voices in scientific writing, and that uses literature as a catalyst to create discourse and understanding through public programming. Each year, a diverse, independent five-person selection committee of well-known authors, scientists, and thinkers will select three outstanding books with scientific or technological themes or characters, published in the last three years. Winning authors will receive a cash prize of $10,000 and be celebrated at an annual awards event. NBF will also host three public events per year, or one per winning author.

This grant supports science and technology programming at the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Foundation-supported programming will include screenings of Oscar nominated and winning films focused on science and scientists, a selection of talks and panel discussions with filmmakers and scientists, and an exhibit exploring the accomplishments of six Black visual effects artists. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, host of the Academy Awards and a membership organization for preeminent film professionals, is opening this new museum in Los Angeles as the definitive showcase devoted to the art, science, and myriad creators of cinema. It will occupy 300,000 square feet across two buildings, including six floors of exhibition galleries and public spaces and two theaters, and will reach an estimated 600,000 visitors in its first year.

This grant underwrites an annual fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography (the Center) at the City University of New York (CUNY) to support an author writing a biography of a scientist, engineer, inventor, or mathematician. The Center is the only academic institution in the country devoted to promoting the practice of biography. Founded in 2007, its mission is to foster excellence in biographical writing and to encourage the academy to understand biography as a scholarly and rigorous discipline. Fellows receive a one-time award of $72,000, a graduate research assistant, dedicated office space, and access to both the Center’s fellow biographers and CUNY’s science faculty as advisors. Additional grant funds support outreach to publicize the fellowship with relevant audiences. The current fellows are: Dr. Laura J. Snyder, writing a biography of neurologist Oliver Sacks; Miriam Horn, writing a biography of biologist and conservationist George Schaller; and Patchen Barss, writing a biography of mathematician and cosmologist Roger Penrose.