National Science Foundation’s 2019 Budget Prioritizes “10 Big Ideas”

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has released its FY19 budget with a topline request of $7.47 billion, a figure that is consistent with FY17 appropriations. The budget request looks to expedite NSF’s “10 Big Ideas for Future Investments” program, promising funding to interdisciplinary areas that integrate different science and engineering fields to create new areas of collaboration amongst industry, academia and government. NSF is looking to dedicate $30 million each to six research-focused programs under the “Big Ideas” initiative:

• Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR)
• The Future of Work at the Human Technology Frontier (FW-HTF)
• Windows on the Universe (WoU): The Era of Multimessenger Astrophysics
• The Quantum Leap (QL): Leading the Next Quantum Revolution
• Understanding the Rules of Life (URoL): Predicting Phenotype
• Navigating the New Arctic (NNA)

In addition to the Big Ideas, the budget request commits $20 million to the NSF INCLUDES program, which looks to increase participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The program represents approximately 27 percent of the total federal academic basic research budget. NSF Director France Cordova summed up the budget request, stating, “NSF challenges the research community to innovate, and we hold our agency to the same standard of constantly improving and progressing. This budget request would allow NSF to build on the important work done by our directorates within individual fields by encouraging convergence among different disciplines in science and engineering and collaboration with partners in different sectors. Investments that incorporate such an approach will accelerate U.S. innovation.”

To view the full budget request, click here: https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2019/toc.jsp

To learn more about NSF’s "10 Big Ideas for Future Investments" program, click here: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/big_ideas/