The Sloan Science Prizes
for YouTube
$100,000 Prize in
Documentary Winner for “Blueprint to Flight: Building an Airplane from Scratch”!
$50,000 Prize in
Narrative Fiction Winner for “The 2084 Club: The Channel”!
IMI is proud to partner with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to award two Sloan Science Prizes for YouTube. These prizes support the creation of exceptional work on YouTube that explores themes related to science and technology.
The Sloan Science Prize in Documentary will provide $100,000 to support the development and production of nonfiction work that showcases subjects in science and technology.
The Sloan Science Prize in Narrative Fiction will provide $50,000 to support the development and production of a short film or series pilot that dramatizes scientific themes and/or characters.
Applications are now closed. The Prizes will be selected by a jury of independent media and science professionals and judged based on the creativity of the proposal, feasibility of the project, focus on science and technology as a theme, and potential impact. The winners of the Sloan Science Prizes will be announced at IMI Fest on November 16, 2024.
Introducing the Jury
Destin Sandlin
Creator and host of the YouTube channel SmarterEveryDay, which explores the world through science. Sandlin is a United States civilian army missile engineer dedicated to making science accessible to a broad audience.
Jonathan Nolan
A screenwriter, director, and producer known for creating complex, thought-provoking stories. He co-created Westworld and co-wrote films like The Dark Knight and Interstellar. Frequently collaborating with his brother Christopher Nolan, he explores themes of time, memory, and artificial intelligence in his work.
Sabrina Cruz
Co-creator and host of the YouTube channel Answer in Progress, which strips away the stigma of not knowing things and brings back the joy in learning. Cruz has a degree in math from the University of Toronto.
Stephon Alexander
Theoretical physicist, musician, and author who explores connections between cosmology, particle physics, and quantum gravity. Alexander is a professor of physics at Brown University and author of The Jazz of Physics, which links music with our understanding of the structure of the universe.
Elaine Sevier
Co-founder and Director of Strategic Development at IMI, she holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard Medical School and completed her undergraduate studies at Stanford.
About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a New York-based, philanthropic institution that makes grants in research in science, technology, and economics; quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and public engagement with science. Sloan's program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater, and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience and to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities.
Over the past two decades, the Sloan Foundation has supported over 850 narrative film projects as well as over 100 documentaries, 200 books, and 350 theatrical productions to create more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.
Sloan’s Film program supports annual awards in screenwriting and film production at top film schools nationwide and screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, Toronto International Film Festival, Film Independent, SFFILM, and others, The Foundation’s theater program commissions 20 science plays each year from the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the National Theatre in London, while supporting select productions across the country and abroad. The Sloan book program includes early support for Hidden Figures, the best-selling book that became the highest grossing Oscar-nominated film of 2017, and Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus, adapted for the screen in Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer. The Foundation was also an early funder of digital media, providing pioneering support for Radiolab and continues to support podcasts like Planet Money, Lost Women of Science, and Science Friday.
For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, please visit www.sloan.org or follow the Public Understanding program at @SloanPublic on X, Instagram and Facebook.