2018 Annual Report Alfred P. Sloan Foundation $ 2018 Annual Report Contents Preface II Mission Statement III From the President IV The Year in Discovery VI About the Grants Listing 1 2018 Grants by Program 2 2018 Financial Review 101 Audited Financial Statements and Schedules 103 Board of Trustees 133 Officers and Staff 134 Index of 2018 Grant Recipients 135 Cover: The Sloan Foundation Telescope at Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico as it appeared in May 1998, when it achieved first light as the primary instrument of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. An early set of images is shown superimposed on the sky behind it. (CREDIT: DAN LONG, APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY) I Alfred P. Sloan Foundation $ 2018 Annual Report Preface The ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION administers a private fund for the benefit of the public. It accordingly recognizes the responsibility of making periodic reports to the public on the management of this fund. The Foundation therefore submits this public report for the year 2018. II Alfred P. Sloan Foundation $ 2018 Annual Report Mission Statement The ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION makes grants primarily to support original research and education related to science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics. The Foundation believes that these fields—and the scholars and practitioners who work in them—are chief drivers of the nation’s health and prosperity. The Foundation also believes that a reasoned, systematic understanding of the forces of nature and society, when applied inventively and wisely, can lead to a better world for all. III Alfred P. Sloan Foundation $ 2018 Annual Report From the President ADAM F. FALK n 2018, for only the third time in history, the Nobel exclusion of women, and the discrimination and Prize in physics was awarded to a woman. Donna disadvantage women scientists and economists have IStrickland of the University of Waterloo was hon- long faced, are fundamentally inconsistent with these ored, alongside her collaborator Gérard Mourou, for communities being healthy ones. Gender equity in the development of a revolutionary laser technique science and economics matters to us profoundly, known as chirped pulse amplification. Hearing the both for reasons of fundamental justice and because news, I found myself torn between two impulses—on sexism, by suppressing the contributions of half the the one hand, to celebrate the long overdue recogni- human race, keeps some of the best research from tion of the contributions extraordinary women have being done at all. made to physics, and on the other, to bemoan the Why is gender equality coming so slowly, particularly absurdity that Strickland is only the third woman ever in fields like physics and economics? The reasons are to be so honored. multifold and complex, but the evidence is unambig- Six months later, in May 2019, the American uous that they do not include gendered differences in Economics Association awarded the John Bates the distribution of talent or interest. Take a boy and a Clark Medal to a woman, Emi Nakamura of the girl in high school with equal aptitude for and interest University of California, for her seminal contributions in physics or economics. A decade later, the boy is in the field of macroeconomics. Presented since 1947 much more likely than the girl to be a physicist or an to an American economist under the age of 40, the economist. The gender ratio gets more imbalanced Clark Medal is considered second in prestige only to at every educational level. There is something amiss the Nobel Prize. Nakamura is the fourth woman in within the cultures of these fields, messages (some- this seventy-two-year history to receive the medal. times subtle, sometimes overt) that women don’t Again, an announcement to both celebrate and be- belong. And these messages persist despite the great moan. Change comes, but it is coming all too slowly. goodwill, the desire to do better, of many men and women in economics and the sciences. At the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, where we support research in basic science and economics, we are This is a complex problem that has no single solution. deeply concerned with the health of the communi- Interventions are needed at every stage of develop- ties of scholars who do this research. The historical ment of a young researcher. But one particularly IV Alfred P. Sloan Foundation $ 2018 Annual Report critical phase is the years spent as an untenured Creating a world of gender equality, and of equal- professor, with the extraordinary pressure to prove ity of all kinds, requires these two complementary oneself as a fully independent investigator while approaches. We must support individual scholars in simultaneously learning to be an effective teacher navigating the environment that exists now, while at and a good departmental citizen. Recognizing this, the same time insisting that the environment itself in 1955 Alfred P. Sloan himself established the Sloan improve over time. Bring more women to the table, Research Fellowships, one-time awards made to the but also make the table a better, more welcoming, most promising untenured faculty. We now name 126 more rewarding place for women to be. We bring Fellows each year, in eight areas of research, with an this dual philosophy to our grantmaking programs award level that will rise to $75,000 this fall. Because that are dedicated explicitly to improving representa- (unlike federal grants) the funds a Sloan Research tion in science and economics. The Sloan-supported Fellowship provides are completely unrestricted, they University Centers of Exemplary Mentoring are built are a particularly valuable source of support for a fac- on this philosophy, and their success depends on how ulty member. It’s the kind of support that can help a measures to improve diversity and those to improve talented young researcher stay in a field and develop inclusion reinforce and amplify each other. her career even in the face of being in a small and The comprehensive nature of the problem of inequal- perhaps unwelcomed minority. ity and the multifaceted approach that is required to Perhaps I should mention now that Donna Strickland ameliorate it has led us to rename our Education and was a Sloan Research Fellow. As was Emi Nakamura. Advancement for Underrepresented Groups program As were the other three women (Susan Athey, Esther the program in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Duflo, and Amy Finkelstein) who have won the John STEM Higher Education. The new name reflects bet- Bates Clark Medal. To be sure, it would be ridiculous ter both the breadth of our efforts and the ineluctable to imply that without the Sloan Fellowship these four interrelatedness of supporting diversity, insisting on distinguished scholars would not have achieved great equity, and fostering inclusion in the communities of things. Nonetheless we are proud to have supported scholars in which the Foundation is so deeply invested. them at a point when they were not yet famous, to An essential core of that deep investment is a com- have helped them along journeys not only of discovery mitment to women, to the Donna Stricklands and the but of changing the character of their fields. Emi Nakamuras, and all the women working in the More than half of the senior scholars who sit on the labs, and libraries, and lecture halls where science is Sloan Research Fellowship selection committees are done. To those women we pledge our support and women, a fact we are very proud of as these commit- partnership in working hard to honor their contribu- tees have the critical job of determining which young tions and make the institutions of science into better, scientists receive recognition and support. I suspect it more just, more welcoming places for women to be. is also part of the reason that the pool of young schol- ars nominated for Sloan Research Fellowships, as well as the ranks of the winners, are consistently more gender diverse than their fields as a whole. Support for individual women is an essential element of the Foundation’s commitment to fostering gender equity. But we also must take the opportunity to influence research culture in other, perhaps deeper, ways. In every grant proposal we consider, we ask the pro- posers to engage with gender diversity. If a grant is to support students or postdocs, what is the inves- tigator’s history of training women? If a grant is to support a conference, is there gender balance in the roster of speakers? If a grant is to support software development, is there diversity in the team that will do that work? V Alfred P. Sloan Foundation $ 2018 Annual Report The Year in Discovery SOME THINGS SLOAN GRANTEES LEARNED THIS YEAR As a grantmaking institution, Sloan works to grease the wheels of scientific progress. Our day-to-day is about how to get good ideas funded; how to make sure this or that bright young researcher gets recognized; how to make sure this methodology or that piece of technology is being used most effectively. Rational inquiry is a process, and every day we work to make that process better. But every day we also try to take a step back from the minutiae of scientific process and remind ourselves that research is about finding stuff out. At the end of all the grantmaking we do is some researcher somewhere trying to figure out how one tiny—or in the case of astronomers, not so tiny—piece of the world works. The work we fund is about discovery, and about how discovery can be a powerful tool for making the world a better place. The Foundation has more than 1,600 active grants in its portfolio. Nearly every day a Sloan-funded researcher finds out something new.