The goal of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation film school program is to influence the next generation of filmmakers to create more realistic and dramatic stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers through the visual media. This innovative program awards prizes at six leading film schools: American Film Institute; UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television; Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama; Columbia University Film Department; NYU Tisch School of the Arts; and USC School of Cinema-Television.
Congratulations 2020-2021 Sloan Winners!
Film Production
Solastagia by Matthew Johnson
A career oceanographer is forced to grapple with the true purpose of her work when her mentee threatens to expose it. Field of science: Oceanography.
H4 Brides by Yugandhara Muthukrishnan
The story follows Swetha, an Indian woman who hopes to pursue a doctorate in physics while living in the United States as a H4 dependent visa holder. She navigates one of the oldest and most entrenched social institutions in the world, The Indian Arranged Marriage system, with the very scientific education that was given to her to make her a viable candidate for the institution. She aims to pursue a higher education in the US after marrying a H1B visa holder, an opportunity that was denied to her before marriage.
Field of science: Gravitation, general and special relativity.
Feature Film Screenwriting
Northern Lights by Marian Whitaker
An ambitious Alaska Native scientist spends her days as a glorified babysitter while studying the Northern Lights in a small Alaskan village. When disaster strikes, she must use her knowledge to save her fellow researcher and a stranded group of children.
Field of science: Space weather.
Dolphinella by Jen Zhao
In 1964 LA, Anna Fei joins a NASA-funded lab with the aim of teaching human speech to Finn, a bottlenose dolphin. She lives with him in a house half-filled with water, and upon observing his intelligence and emotional capacity, starts to question the morality of the experiment.
Field of science: Cetology.
Television Screenwriting
The Home Front by Rosalind Grush
After German troops in World War I use a deadly poison gas on the battlefield for the first time in history, a female chemist at Imperial College London organizes a secret team of women scientists to start developing an arsenal of wartime technology to help the Allies win the war.
Field of science: Chemistry.
The Sleep Watchers by Yashna Malhotra
A period drama about Nathaniel Kleitman, Eugene Aserinsky and William Dement - the pioneering scientists who discovered REM sleep and fought tirelessly to put the world of sleep research on the map for scientific scholarship.
Field of science: Dream psychophysiology, REM sleep, sleep disorders, behavioral science.