A Year After Inflation Reduction Act Passage, Race to Accelerate Clean Energy Is On Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 8/17/2023 on 8/17/2023 There are reasons for both grave concern and optimism in our fight to avoid a climate catastrophe. While each day brings news of the rapidly worsening impacts of climate change, I have hope at the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the most consequential climate law in U.S. history.
The Carceral Carousel: Q&A with Grantees Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Detention Watch Network Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 7/21/2023 on 7/21/2023 Over the past three decades, the federal immigration and criminal legal systems have become increasingly intertwined. Using the criminalization of Black and brown people as a tool, these two systems, working in tandem, have driven up rates of arrest, incarceration, and deportation, fueling the growth of the prison industry and leading to the separation of both citizen and noncitizen families.
Heising-Simons Foundation Funds Six Scientists Looking for Signatures of Life in the Universe Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 7/14/2023 on 7/14/2023 The Heising-Simons Foundation’s Science program has made a suite of grants totaling $550,000 to support six exoplanet scientists working on projects that originated in a Scialog program entitled “Signatures of Life in the Universe,” convened by Research Corporation for Science Advancement.
Heising-Simons Foundation Joins Philanthropic Funders in Response to Supreme Court’s Decision on Affirmative Action Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 6/30/2023 on 6/30/2023 The Heising-Simons Foundation signed the following statement by funders and philanthropic organizations in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Grantee Partner Publications, May – June 2023 Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 6/30/2023 on 6/30/2023 The Heising-Simons Foundation is proud to highlight publications by grantee partners. We encourage you to look through their inspiring work. Email us at [email protected] if you would like us to share any publications. Community Schools Learning Exchange (co-author) Don’t leave students with disabilities out of California’s massive community schools investment Date of Publication: May 1, …
Liz Simons: “The Biggest Driver of Mass Incarceration? Maybe Mass Incarceration” Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 6/29/2023 on 6/29/2023 “One of the biggest drivers of mass incarceration, for all genders, is mass incarceration itself,” writes Liz Simons, Heising-Simons Foundation’s Chair of the Board, in her article for the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (Stanford PACS).
How Dr. Joy Buolamwini is Working Towards Equitable and Accountable Technology Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 6/28/2023 on 6/28/2023 Several years ago, while still a graduate student at MIT’s Media Lab, Joy Buolamwini began to notice a troubling pattern in facial recognition technology––an inability to detect a wide range of skin tones and facial structures, even in widely available systems employed by Big Tech, government agencies, and law enforcement.
51 Pegasi b Fellow Discovers First Extrasolar Radiation Belt: Q&A with Dr. Melodie Kao Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 6/13/2023 on 6/13/2023 A team of scientists led by Dr. Melodie Kao, a 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellow based at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has discovered the first extra-solar radiation belt, a zone of energetic charged particles that are captured by and held around a planet by that planet’s magnetosphere. See below for a Q&A with …
Letter from the President and CEO — Spring 2023 Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 6/6/2023 on 6/6/2023 The Greenland ice sheet extends more than 600,000 square miles, covering most of the country. It is about four times the size of California and it is melting. The loss from the ice sheet is responsible for a significant percentage of today’s sea level rise.