Launched by the National Academy of Sciences in 2008 with Sloan support, the Science and Entertainment Exchange (the Exchange), is an ongoing program to increase the quality of scientific content in American film through providing directors, producers, and other Hollywood film executives with access to high quality consulting by real working scientists and researchers. Providing more than 250 consultations a year, the Exchange works to ensure accuracy when science is used in film and television, seeds new ideas within Hollywood by exposing creative and industry professionals to new scientific content, and acts as a well of professional advice across a wide range of scientific topics. This grant provides support for the Exchange for a period of three years, including funds to support science consultations, help expand and diversify the Exchange’s roster of more than 3,000 science consultants, create up to six videos targeting an online audience, and launch a new monthly series of online events designed to highlight successful industry-scientist partnerships fostered by the program.  

A professor of public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Robert Putnam became famous in 2000 when he published the bestseller Bowling Alone, a prescient analysis of the fraying of civic life in America. In that work, Putnam vividly documented the unraveling of the clubs, groups, leagues, and other community organizations that had previously bound Americans together, leading to social isolation, malaise, and a collapse of civic engagement and trust in American institutions. Since then, he has published important work on the religious roots of the culture wars and the decrease of social interactions among different socioeconomic classes.  Funds from this grant support the production of Unraveling America: A Social Science Detective Story with Robert Putnam, a documentary film about Putnam and his work, to be directed jointly by filmmakers Rebecca Davis and Pete Davis, a former student of Putnam’s.

This grant provides funding for a major new effort by Pioneer Works—a thriving, multidisciplinary cultural center in Red Hook, NY—to launch its new multicultural and interdisciplinary website, The Broadcast. The Broadcast’s Science Channel will include science-themed video, animations, podcasts, and editorial presented in fresh, original ways and featuring some of the most important scientists and scientific ideas of our day. Content development is being overseen by Janna Levin, the head of Pioneer Works’ science program and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College/Columbia University. Planned content includes a fresh mix of programming, including Pioneer Works’s signature Scientific Controversies series, in which Levin interviews two leading scientists about their latest work, along with Author Talks, Conversations, Science and Society, The Universe in Verse, and Condensed Matters. In addition to supporting content development and production, grant funds will support an ambitious marketing and social media campaign that includes a major build-out of Pioneer Works’s website, as well as expanded content through their newsletter, YouTube channel, Instagram, and Twitter.

This grant provides funding to American Masters for the research, production, and broadcast of a 90-minute documentary about the life, work, and impact of Dr. Anthony Fauci, The head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for almost 40 years, Dr. Fauci has become an international celebrity and the face of science and reason in responding to COVID-19, advising the government and educating the public about the virus, the nature of pandemics, and how best to protect ourselves individually and as a society. In revisiting the long arc of Fauci’s career and his role in combatting HIV/AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and COVID-19, the documentary promises to shine a light on Fauci’s professional evolution, the political and social forces that shape epidemic responses in the United States, and the evolution of vaccine development, clinical drug trials, and public health policy. The documentary will air in 2021 as part of a PBS strand focusing on health issues.

This grant provides funding for bestselling author Steven Johnson and historian David Olusoga, working with Nutopia, an award-winning TV production company, to produce and broadcast Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer, a four-part television series that will examine the COVID-19 pandemic in light of the past 300-year history of public health. Scheduled to air on PBS in the spring of 2021, each episode will juxtapose COVID-19 with one aspect of medicine and public health that has played a central role in increasing life expectancy over the past 100 years. Episode one explores our growing ability to prevent the spread of illness through the use of variolation and vaccination. Episode two explores the role of analyzing and mapping data—the science of epidemiology—in improving societal health outcomes. Episode three focuses on the surprisingly recent invention of penicillin and other medicines that combat illness directly. The final episode looks at the scientific and regulatory innovations that promote public safety and healthy behaviors.

One the most fascinating, important, but difficult-to-understand features of indoor environmental chemistry is how the human occupants of an indoor space shape the chemical processes taking place within it.  In response to this challenge, a group of European researchers led by Jonathan Williams at the Max Plank Institute for Chemistry came together in 2018 to study this issue.  Williams’s Indoor Chemical Emissions and Reactivity (ICHEAR) project designed a series of experiments set in twin stainless steel climate chambers that aimed to measure the chemicals emissions from human breath and skin across a variety of conditions.  ICHEAR set important baseline data about human emissions to the indoor environment and how those emissions vary depending on common environmental variables like room temperature, humidity, abient ozone levels, and the type of clothing being worn. This grant funds a second round of the ICHEAR experiments (known as ICHEAR2), allowing Williams and his co-investigator, Pawel Wargocki of the Technical University of Denmark, to build on their initial results.  In a new set of experiments using the same twin-climate-chamber design, Williams and Wargocki will probe how a new set of variables affect human emissions in indoor air, including exercise, hygiene (washing frequency, clothing), and deodorant and fragrance use. This experiments will inform how indoor emissions and chemistry associated with humans are altered by real-world lifestyle choices.

This grant provides three years of support to MOCCIE, the Modeling Consortium for Chemistry of Indoor Environments. Led by Nicola Carslaw of the University of York and Manabu Shiraiwa of UC Irvine, MOCCIE is a consortium of theoretical and experimental chemists, statisticians, computer scientists, and building experts devoted to creating high quality models of indoor chemical processes across various size and time scales. Over the next three years, MOCCIE researchers will use a variety of cutting edge techniques, including molecular dynamics simulations, kinetic process modeling, gas-phase chemistry and particle-phase modeling, thermodynamic modeling, and computational fluid dynamics in an attempt to develop  comprehensive, integrated physical-chemical models of indoor environmental chemical processes.  The models will include a detailed representation of gas-phase, particle-phase, and surface chemistry in indoor environments that simulates how occupants, indoor activities, and buildings influence indoor chemical processes. Model design will be driven by three fundamental questions. One, can we understand indoor chemical and physical processes well enough to predict them quantitatively with computer models? Two, what are the major uncertainties in these models? Three, what experiments or field measurements would improve those predictions or reduce those uncertainties? Findings will be shared through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at conferences and meetings, and the developed models will be made freely available through an easily accessible open access repository.

This grant funds an extended field experiment, Chemical Assessment of Surfaces and Air (CASA), that will bring together a dozen research groups from across the country to advance the state of understanding of indoor chemistry. Led by Delphine Farmer of Colorado State University and Marina Vance of UC Boulder, CASA will occur at  the Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility, a test house laboratory managed by the National Institute of Standards in Gaithersburg, Maryland. CASA will consist of a diverse series of experiments that revolve around disturbing a well-controlled, heavily-sensored, indoor environment in a variety of ways and observing how those disturbances affect the evolution of the chemical processes going on inside.  Questions for investigation involve how perturbations in indoor environmental conditions, such as temperature, relative humidity, and ventilation rate, affect indoor surface and air composition; how the introduction of novel molecules like ozone or volatile organic compounds influence the chemical transformations happening in the air and on surfaces; and how changes to the acidity, reactivity, or other properties of indoor surfaces like countertops and floors affect indoor chemical processes.  Grant funds will support the organization of CASA, coordination of the research teams, and associated data infrastructure and community-building activities aimed both at participating research groups and at connecting findings with the growing body of indoor chemistry research.  The project will result in at least 10 new peer-reviewed publications and 20 conference presentations, a more developed website with links to an accessible data archive, data analysis tutorials, a set of unified datasets, and a conference for study participants to discuss preliminary findings.

Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are water-soluble organic (WSO) chemicals used industrial and consumer products, particularly those designed to be grease-resistant.  This includes non-stick cookware, stain resistant fabrics, indoor-outdoor carpeting, and longlasting cosmetics. However, several studies have show that human exposure to PSAS, may lead to a range of adverse health outcomes. Airborne exposure has not been, up to know, thought to be a primary vector for PFAS exposure, but in 2008, a study of PFAS by University of North Carolina chemist Barbara Turpin documented PFAS concentrations in both indoor and outdoor air, with preliminary results showing compounds existing in both environments, though with higher concentrations indoors. Funds from this grant support the continuation and extension of Turpin’s work, as she attempts to more rigoursly quantify the concentration, fate, and behavior of WSO compounds in indoor air with a focus on these substances.  Turpin’s workplan will pay special attention to the role surfaces play in determining PFAS concentration, including how surface composition and other factors, like its age or dampness, affect the absorption of airborn PFAS.  Research findings will be shared through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national and international conferences, and three graduate students will be trained.