NSF lays the foundation for the next generation of technologies and support for American talent

The U.S. National Science Foundation today announced a series of programs and initiatives to support the ambitious vision articulated in the White House report Science: A New Golden Age and in "NSF leadership in a new golden age of science." These new programs and initiatives combined with the $1.5 billion in investments announced in August will help the agency improve how it evaluates and supports science, harness super intelligence to accelerate discovery, and invest in exceptional students and early-career researchers.

NSF is establishing an Office of Metascience to serve as a testbed for studying how scientific communities respond to novel review and funding mechanisms, applying those lessons learned to NSF programs to accelerate discovery. The office will operate with full transparency, sharing its experiments and findings with academia, industry, and philanthropy. A job announcement for the head of the Office of Metascience will be forthcoming.

In addition, both UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and NSF intend to build on the metascience principles that the United States has outlined in the "Kyoto Vision for a Golden Age of Science," and that both agencies have articulated in, respectively, the "NSF leadership in a new golden age of science" memorandum and the UKRI Strategy 2026-31.

NSF is launching two Grand Research Challenge (GRC) prize competitions to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration, attract nontraditional entrants, and form cross-sector teams to spur rapid advances in scientific understanding in crucial areas of science and technology (S&T).