National Science Foundation(NSF)
Independent agency funding basic research, STEM education, research infrastructure, and technology translation across nonmedical science and engineering.
Function
Independent agency
Parent
Top-level (no parent)
FY2026 Budget Authority
$10.11B
Official Data
USAspending.govEvidence & Review
Evidence Confidence
HighVerification Status
AI-researched, unverifiedLast Reviewed
Jul 5, 2026
Retrieved On
Jul 5, 2026
Modernization Levers
AI-assisted administrative screening with human review, interoperable grant data, open research outputs, and portfolio analytics for emerging fields.
Administrative Burden Review
Researchers spend large time on proposals and compliance; reducing low-value paperwork increases science per dollar.
Duplication & Coordination Review
NSF overlaps with NIH, DOE, DOD, NASA, NIST, and USDA; coordination should preserve investigator-driven discovery.
Risk & Guardrails
Do not replace peer review with industrial policy quotas or automated scoring; research security cannot become blanket exclusion.
Innovation Party Proposal
Protect NSF's discovery engine while reducing paperwork: shared grant infrastructure, stronger facility governance, research-security clarity, and translation programs evaluated by evidence rather than press-release counts.