Sloan's Exploratory Grantmaking in Technology program

Sloan's Exploratory Grantmaking in Technology program is sponsored by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Alfred P.

Sloan Foundation disburses approximately $80 million annually across science, technology, and economics. Its Exploratory Grantmaking in Technology program accepts letters of inquiry on a rolling basis.

## To continually monitor the landscape of emerging technology with the aim of identifying emerging new sectors, tools, and methods of working that we believe have potential, but which may not yet receive funding from mainstream/other sources. [](https://sloan.

org/programs/digital-technology/exploratory-grantmaking-in-technology) Exploratory grantmaking is intended to bring community needs and priorities into sharper focus and allow the Foundation to determine whether there is a clear strategy and potential impact in a specific area.

Supported activities may include workshops and other expert convenings, early technology development and prototyping, landscape analyses, development of protocols and standards, initial research on and engagement with potential user communities, and demonstration or other proof-of-concept projects.

Ideal focus areas lie at the intersection of research and technology, are sufficiently limited that the Foundation could make an impact with its available resources, and involve issues for which public or private funding is scarce or unavailable. [](https://sloan.

org/programs/digital-technology/exploratory-grantmaking-in-technology) The complexity and opacity of AI-driven research methods has raised new questions about the degree to which their results can or should be trusted to advance scientific research.

Current areas of interest include: reproducibility and transparency of machine learning-enabled science; ways that the philosophy of science and related fields might help to inform the optimal uses of machine learning to produce new knowledge; and the relative value of foundation models vs. good old fashioned machine learning for scientific discovery.

### Automation in Science Advances in robotics can enable the automation of many aspects of scientific lab and field work, especially when coupled with AI to dramatically accelerate iterative cycles of discovery. Though not substantially funding the implementation of these systems at scale, we are currently exploring their optimal uses by researchers as well as the institutional structures to support them. [](https://sloan.

org/programs/digital-technology/exploratory-grantmaking-in-technology)[](https://sloan.

org/programs/digital-technology/exploratory-grantmaking-in-technology) * $399,297 To continue development of and community engagement with an open source framework and resources to streamline the process of building and deploying generative AI applications in academic settings Learn More * $125,000 To support the prototyping of a domain-specific AI copilot for process engineering scale-up research Learn More * $179,651 To study how the use of generative AI-based code assistants impacts team-level coordination in scientific software development Learn More * $82,353 To strengthen US participation and leadership in global research data standards by exploring virtual and in-person pathways for data professionals Learn More * $150,000 To pilot the translation of AI research and technology into local contexts via cooperative extension Learn More * $99,916 To develop CommUnityBuddy, a conversational agent leveraging generative AI to assist in on-boarding new contributors to open source scientific software projects Learn More [](https://sloan.

org/programs/digital-technology/exploratory-grantmaking-in-technology) * Platforms, protocols, and products supported through the Foundation's grantmaking Learn more [](https://sloan. org/programs/digital-technology/exploratory-grantmaking-in-technology) Interested grantseekers should email a letter of inquiry of no more than two pages to technology@sloan. org.

[](https://sloan. org/programs/digital-technology/exploratory-grantmaking-in-technology) * Joshua M.

Greenberg Program Director * Sonali Chadha Program Coordinator * Devora Najjar Program Associate Exploratory Grantmaking in Technology /programs/digital-technology/exploratory-grantmaking-in-technology Program Goal To continually monitor the landscape of emerging technology with the aim of identifying emerging new sectors, tools, and methods of working that we believe have potential, but which may not yet receive funding from mainstream/other sources.

Strategy Exploratory grantmaking is intended to bring community needs and priorities into sharper focus and allow the Foundation to determine whether there…