White House Establishes FY2020 Research and Development Priorities

The White House recently released a memo detailing its research and development (R&D) priorities for 2020. The FY 2020 Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities highlights the administration’s intentions for maintaining U.S. leadership through eight “R&D Priority Areas” and five “R&D Priority Practices.” The priority areas focus on specific aspects of R&D that the administration wishes to bolster and assert its dominance. The eight priority areas are:

• Security of the American People
• American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Information Sciences and Strategic Computing
• American Connectivity and Autonomy
• American Manufacturing
• American Space Exploration and Commercialization
• American Energy Dominance
• American Medical Innovation
• American Agriculture

The corresponding priority practices provide a roadmap to support the missions of the priority areas. These practices include educating and training a workforce for the 21st Century Economy, transferring technology from laboratory to marketplace, and maximizing interagency coordination and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The memo shares many of the same priorities as the administration’s 2019 budget request, in which the White House increased defense R&D spending by almost one-third, but cut non-defense funding by 19 percent. There is also overlap with the administration’s FY 2019 R&D priorities.

To view the FY 2020 Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities in full, click here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/M-18-22.pdf