NSF Launches New Programs for Quantum Innovation and STEM Research

Insider Brief

• The U.S. National Science Foundation is launching new programs focused on scientific research, quantum innovation, advanced computing, and STEM workforce development.
• NSF will establish an Office of Metascience and launch two Grand Research Challenge competitions, including Quantum+X, to support cross-disciplinary research and quantum applications.
• The agency also plans initiatives including the NSF X-Labs Consortium, Super Intelligence-Native Instruments program, National Math Stars investment, and NextGen Workforce program.

PRESS RELEASE — The U.S. National Science Foundation today announced plans to launch a series of programs and initiatives to support the ambitious vision articulated in the White House report Science: A New Golden Age, the first comprehensive rethinking of the U.S. science and technology enterprise in the last 80+ years. 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.