Sloan Foundation Public Understanding of Science & Technology

11/14/2024

Congrats to the finalists for the Sloan Student Prizes! Administered by Museum of the Moving Image: Sloan Science & Film, these awards recognize science-themed scripts & aim to advance the professional paths of emerging filmmakers as they transition into the film industry

The Grand Jury Prize represents Sloan's best-of-the-best & will be selected from a pool Sloan-awarded scripts at our partner film schools. The Discovery Prize will be awarded to a script from one of six other universities who are not regularly affiliated with the film program

MoMI and Sloan Foundation have selected nine finalists to work with mentors year-round and complete a science-themed screenplay for a $20,000 prize.

09/18/2024

The iconic NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration women who made history by helping America win the space race with their mathematical feats will be honored with Congressional Gold Medals at a ceremony today at 3pm ET in Washington, D.C.

The Sloan Foundation is proud to have supported the film Hidden Figures that told the story of these mathematicians' accomplishments in both propelling science forward and championing equal rights, and our Vice President & Program Director Doron Weber will be there today.

You can watch a livestream of the event - be a part of this historic moment:

Congressional Gold Medals in commemoration of the lives of Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, in recognition of their service to the United States during the ...

01/30/2024

“As you start to unpack it, you realize it's not purely chronological and the chapters are very neatly kind of interleaved. It’s thematic with this sort of underlying chronology.” - in TIME on Sloan Pulitzer Prizes-winning book AMERICAN PROMETHUS by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin, the basis for his hit film OPPENHEIMER

As ‘Oppenheimer’ heads toward the 2024 Oscars with 13 nominations, its director reflects on the urgency of the story it tells.

01/11/2024

Check out the latest episode of the Sloan Scientific American podcast Lost Women of Science hosted by Katie Hafner and Amy Scharf about amateur paleontologist, LGBTQ icon and founder of University of California Museum of Paleontology & Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Annie Montague Alexander

Annie Montague Alexander went on paleontology expeditions most women could only dream of in the early 1900s

01/09/2024

Congrats to Oppenheimer's Robert Downey Jr & Ludwig van Goranson for the 5 Golden Globes awards!

The film is based on Sloan Pulitzer Prizes-winning book "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

Christopher Nolan’s WWII drama landed the second most Golden Globes nominations behind “Barbie.”

01/04/2024

The trailer for Molly McGlynn's film "Fitting In" starring Maddie Ziegler is out now! Selected as the Sloan Showcase at Toronto International Film Festival, the film explores the science of sexual/gender identity through the story of a teen w/ a rare reproductive disorder

And Teen Vogue has the exclusive first look at the official trailer.

12/18/2023

Thrilled to announce that the Sloan SFFILM Science in Cinema Prize was awarded to the hit film OPPENHEIMER!

The film was based on -winning Sloan book "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

The film was honored with a special screening and post-show panel with "Oppenheimer" production designer Ruth de Jong, editor Jennifer Lame, sound designer Richard King and UC Berkeley physics professor Benjamin Safdi.

SFFILM is awarding Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer with the 2023 SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Prize

10/23/2023

Congrats to Deb Chachra, author of Sloan book "How Infrastructure Works," out now! The book explains how essential utilities function, how much we rely on them and how they are suffering from systemic neglect & climate change, unfairly burdening marginalized communities

09/05/2023

Check out Sloan / Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) podcast "How to Fix the Internet" with hosts Cindy Cohn & Danny O'Brien. The re-released episode "Securing the Vote" with guest Pamela Smith discusses the possibility of voting online, the role of open-source software & how to find reliable voting information

This episode was first published on May 24, 2022.U.S. democracy is at an inflection point, and how we administer and verify our elections is more important than ever. From hanging chads to glitchy touchscreens to partisan disinformation, too many Americans worry that their votes won’t count and...

08/16/2023

Check out this excerpt of "The Quickening" by Sloan author Elizabeth Rush in The Atlantic!

The book documents the voyage of 57 scientists & crew to the Thwaites Glacier & the challenge of imagining a better future as climate changes

The world’s widest glacier is melting—and changing predictions about our planet’s future.

08/07/2023

"...handily captures the world of physics and physicists"

An excellent review in Ars Technica of Christopher Nolan's latest film Oppenheimer, based on the Pulitzer Prizes-winning Sloan book "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

Technically it's a biopic, but it doesn't play like one.

07/31/2023

Check out this season of the Sloan / Scientific American podcast Lost Women of Science (hosted by Katie Hafner & Amy Scharf) about "The Lost Women of the Manhattan Project," highlighting scientists such as biologist Floy Agnes Lee, physicist Carolyn Parker & explosives technician Frances Dunne

Thousands of scientists worked on the Manhattan project, the top secret push to develop an atomic bomb that would end World War II. Hundreds of those scientists were women.