NSF Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2018-2022

National Science Foundation

BUILDING THE FUTURE

INVESTING IN DISCOVERY
AND INNOVATION
NSF Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2018-2022

National Science Foundation

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The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) (Public Law 10362) and the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-352)
require Federal agencies to develop strategic plans setting forth longterm goals and objectives as well as examples of specific, near-term
performance goals. Guidance on the development of agency strategic
plans is included by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in
OMB Circular A-11. These plans form part of the federal performance
framework. “Building the Future: Investing in Discovery and Innovation”
updates and replaces “Investing in Science, Engineering, and Education
for the Nation’s Future: NSF Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 20142018.” It has been prepared by the NSF staff, working with the National
Science Board, with input from the science, engineering and education
research communities, industry, and others.

About the cover:
For the first time, scientists have directly detected gravitational waves—ripples in space-time
—in addition to light from the spectacular collision of two neutron stars. This marks the first time
that a cosmic event has been observed in both gravitational waves and light. The discovery was
made using the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO); the
Europe-based Virgo detector; and some 70 ground- and space-based observatories. The cover
image is an artist’s illustration of the two merging neutron stars. The narrow beams represent the
gamma-ray burst while the rippling space-time grid indicates the isotropic gravitational waves that
characterize the merger. Swirling clouds of material ejected from the merging stars are a possible
source of the light that was seen at lower energies.

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MESSAGE FROM THE NSF DIRECTOR
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a U.S. federal agency with a global
reputation for supporting groundbreaking research in science, engineering and
learning. With strong, bipartisan support in Congress, NSF has made it possible for
U.S. researchers to make discoveries that deepen our understanding of the universe
and transform our daily lives.
That’s why I’m so excited about this Strategic Plan. It lays out a vision for sustaining
that momentum of discovery and ensuring the Nation remains a global leader
in research and innovation. We’ve included examples of discoveries that NSFsupported researchers have made, and the impacts these have had on the Nation’s
economy and well-being. We’ve also laid out some exciting new opportunities for
research at the frontiers of science and engineering.
Some of our toughest global challenges will rely on solutions grounded in science, which is one reason developed
and developing countries are increasing their investments in fundamental research. Basic research investments are
transforming entire industries, from transportation to computing, and from manufacturing to agriculture. They are
also producing new technologies that have changed how we work and interact with each other. At the same time,
the accelerated pace of discovery means that we as a Nation must be prepared for the changes that are coming
so we can harness their potential. Part of that preparation begins with knowing what corners to look around and
which questions to ask.
Scientific breakthroughs start with a question, a big idea, about the nature of things that often leads to a
fundamental shift in thinking. The ability to pursue and investigate that question, and to innovate along the
way, is what enables the discoveries that ultimately transform the world. This plan illustrates the opportunities
ahead with examples from some of NSF’s “10 Big Ideas” for future investment. These bold, long-term research
questions consider critical societal challenges and important lines of scientific inquiry where NSF aims to catalyze
new breakthroughs. Partnerships with other federal agencies, nonprofits, private-sector collaborators, industry
partners and the public will help advance these research areas.
This plan also underscores where greater investments are needed; for example, in research infrastructure
and broadening participation in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce. As
highlighted in the 2018 Science and Engineering Indicators report, the number of non-STEM jobs requiring STEM
skills is now on par with the number of STEM jobs in the U.S. As societies around the world transition to more
knowledge-based economies, NSF is committed to preparing a 21st century workforce and ensuring that talented
individuals from all sectors of our society have access to STEM learning.
With the support of the American people, NSF-funded researchers will continue to transform the world with their
ingenuity and creativity, providing new knowledge and innovations that will propel our economy and enhance our
lives. I appreciate your support and welcome your interest in the work that NSF does on behalf of the Nation.

France A. Córdova
Director, National Science Foundation

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. MISSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
III. VISION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
IV. CORE VALUES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
V. STRATEGIC PLANNING IN A DYNAMIC CONTEXT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
VI. STRATEGIC GOALS AND OBJECTIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
VII. AGENCY PRIORITY GOAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
VIII. EXAMPLES OF LONG-TERM PERFORMANCE GOALS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
IX. CORE STRATEGIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
X. EVIDENCE BUILDING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
XI. APPENDICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
A.1 Stakeholder Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
A.2 Contributing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
IMAGE CREDITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

“There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage
than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in
every country the surest basis of public happiness.”
George Washington,
First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union (1790)

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I. INTRODUCTION
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an
independent Federal agency that supports
fundamental research across virtually all fields of
science, engineering, and education.

biological, engineered, and human systems. As
a consequence, NSF is well positioned to address
challenges and pursue opportunities that span multiple
disciplines. In addition to advances in the underlying
disciplines, such research challenges require strategies
that promote convergence: the merging of ideas,
approaches, tools, and technologies from widely
diverse fields of knowledge to accelerate innovation
and discovery.

NSF enables society to discover more about the
world that we inhabit and the universe that is
expanding around us.
By understanding how
LINKING ASTRONOMY AND CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURE
things work and how
The ability to support those whose research bridges
to build new complex
diverse fields is a unique value. For example, modern
systems, how people
society relies on satellites for communication, for global
learn and interact, how
positioning, for weather data, and for agricultural
information. By studying stars, we understand more
to make new materials
about our own star, the Sun, and how it interacts with the
and observe the world
Earth’s upper atmosphere. Integrating that knowledge
better, we make possible
with computational science and electrical engineering,
researchers learn how to understand and predict
advances in everything
geomagnetic storms high above the Earth’s surface. This
from manufacturing
knowledge helps minimize disruptions to vital satellite
and education to food
services and electrical power grids.
production, health, and
national security.
NSF’s investments in
discovery and innovation
provide the basis for new
technologies and create a
wealth of broader impacts
for the U.S. Investments in
research projects, people,
and infrastructure have
led to discoveries that
have stimulated economic
growth, improved the
quality of life for many
Americans, and deepened our understanding of the
universe around us (see insets for examples). As
emphasized by Congress, “Scientific and technological
advancement have been the largest drivers of economic
growth in the last 50 years, with the Federal Government
being the largest investor in basic research.”1
NSF is a unique federal agency in terms of the
wide range of fields it supports. NSF’s science and
engineering programs include the study of physical,

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With an annual budget
of about $7.5 billion
(fiscal year 2017), NSF
is the funding source for
approximately 24 percent
of all federally supported
fundamental research
conducted by the faculty
and students at America’s
colleges and universities.
NSF also supports
innovation by small
businesses, partnerships
among academia, industry
and national laboratories,
research in non-profit nonacademic organizations,
and entrepreneurship
training for the academic
research community.

NSF funds programs
designed to foster the
development of the highquality, diverse workforce
needed to carry out
the Nation’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics (STEM) research, building capacity
for undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral
research training.
NSF supports training in research integrity and the
ethical conduct of research, the dissemination of the
results of NSF-funded research, and infrastructure to
provide access to the data generated in such research.

_____________________
1
From Pub. L. 114-329, title II, §201(b)(1), 2017.

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MAKING ECOMMERCE POSSIBLE
Secure communication has always been an important tool in the arsenal
of militaries and diplomats. Governments and their citizens rely on
keeping sensitive communication private. Beginning in the 1970s, NSFfunded researchers led a paradigm shift in secure communication.
Until then, the process of secret and secure communication meant that
the communicating parties had to know each other and set up encoding
and decoding procedures before corresponding. With the development
of public-key cryptography, users can publish their “public keys,” just
as one would publish one’s phone number in a telephone directory.
For confidential communications, people can send secret and secure
messages simply by using the other person’s public key.
This public-key cryptography technology is what makes eCommerce, a
significant and growing fraction of our economy, possible today.

FINDING CANCERS
By supporting a broad spectrum of research domains, NSF facilitates the transfer of knowledge from one area to
another. Digital mammography was developed from research funded by NSF that brought together astronomers and
cancer researchers.
Astronomers and radiologists had a shared problem—they
both needed to pinpoint critical spots against a cluttered,
blurred background. Radiologists need to search images for
micro-calcifications as signs of breast cancer. Astronomers look
for features in images of the cosmos. Collaboration between
astronomers and cancer researchers generated new software
that allows radiologists greater ability to search mammograms
for signs of breast cancer.
This particular link between astronomy and radiology
resulted from an NSF grant that allowed astronomers and
radiologists from Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown
University’s Lombardi Cancer Research Center and the Space
Telescope Science Institute to collaborate on using astronomical
computer software (originally created to look at images
of highly crowded regions of the sky containing millions of
stars) to scan mammograms. When this software is applied
to the examination of mammograms, it removes much of the
background clutter in the image and makes it relatively simple
to detect micro-calcifications. Studies have shown that digital mammography may be more sensitive at locating breast cancer
than film mammography. Digital mammography helps shorten the time to read and analyze mammograms from a few days to
a few hours.

Each year, NSF receives about 50,000 competitive
requests for funding and makes 11,000 to 12,000
new awards. To ensure that proposals are reviewed in
a fair, competitive, transparent, and in-depth manner,
the agency uses a rigorous merit review process. NSF’s

merit review uses two primary criteria to evaluate
proposals for new activities—intellectual merit
(meaning the potential to advance knowledge) and the
project’s broader impacts (encompassing the potential
to benefit society beyond increasing knowledge).

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In FY 2017, NSF funding reached all 50 states, the
District of Columbia, and 3 U.S. territories, primarily
through grants to about 1,800 organizations. An
estimated 350,000 people, including researchers,
postdoctoral fellows, trainees, teachers, and
students, were supported by NSF awards. Of these,
approximately 100,000 were senior researchers,
other professionals, post-doctoral associates, or
graduate students.

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international science and engineering enterprise,
describing global trends in various aspects of
research, technological development, education, and
workforce (https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind/).
More than 220 Nobel Prize winners received support
from NSF at some point in their careers, some
beginning when they were graduate students.

EPSCOR IMPACT
NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate
Competitive Research (EPSCoR) has greatly
increased the research capacity of many
jurisdictions. Eighteen states plus Puerto Rico
joined EPSCoR before 2000. The proportion
of NSF’s research funding that goes to these
doubled between their first three years in the
program and 2014 - 2016.
By 2016, EPSCoR had grown to 31 jurisdictions.
https://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/programs/epscor/

NSF supports an advanced research infrastructure
that includes ships, planes and autonomous research
platforms, astronomical observatories, particle
accelerators, seismic observatories, U.S. research
stations in Antarctica, advanced cyberinfrastructure,
sustained large-scale surveys, and more.
Comprehensive reporting of the research
infrastructure in countries around the world is
provided by the National Center for Science and
Engineering Statistics (NCSES), one of 13 Federal
statistical agencies. NCSES is located within NSF.
Every other year, it develops a broad base of
high-quality quantitative data on the U.S. and

As the examples described in this Plan show, investing
in scientific curiosity has resulted in wide-ranging
benefits: new industries, technologies for better health
care, more jobs, greater economic competitiveness,
contributions to national security, and a deeper
understanding of the universe. NSF remains committed
to ensuring that the Nation will continue to profit from
the fruits of basic research. Ultimately, it is curiositydriven research that upends conventional thinking and
reveals something previously unknown. NSF’s goal is to
fund transformative, curiosity-driven ideas that push the
frontiers of discovery and innovation.

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ARCTIC ICE
Arctic sea ice is an important and dynamic
element in the global climate system. It is
an obstacle to shipping routes across the top
of the world, between Atlantic and Pacific
industrial centers. It also hinders exploration
of the resources on and under the floor of
the Arctic Ocean. To learn more about the
processes influencing the fate of the ice pack,
to improve projections of its future state, and
to understand the ice albedo (fraction of solar
radiation reflected from the surface) and cloud
radiation feedbacks, researchers conducted an
interdisciplinary project, supported by both NSF
and the Office of Naval Research.
The centerpiece of the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean experiment (SHEBA) was the year-long drift of an icebreaker
deliberately frozen into the Arctic ice pack. More than 180 researchers participated in the field campaign, spending from a
few weeks to six months in the field. The focus was to sample, over an annual cycle, the physical properties of the atmosphere,
ice, and ocean in an area equivalent to a grid cell in a high-resolution climate model. The project used satellites, aircraft,
weather balloons, icebreakers, autonomous buoys, cloud radars, lidars (laser-based scanners)
and, through the cooperation of the Navy, a submarine.
Amongst other achievements, SHEBA observations were used to develop and improve models of the evolution of Arctic sea ice
and global Earth-system models.

LEARNING

ABOUT THE

U.S.

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is a long-term study of a representative sample of
people (men, women and children) and the families in which they reside. It emphasizes the dynamic
aspects of economic and demographic behavior, but its content is broad, including sociological and
psychological measures.
The PSID covers almost 50 years. It began in 1968 with a nationally distributed sample of
over 18,000 individuals living in approximately 4,800 families. By 2013, the Survey comprised
approximately 25,000 individuals in 9,000 families.
The PSID data sets have been central in research and knowledge building in key areas such as
intergenerational relations; income, poverty, savings and wealth; demographic events such as teen
childbearing, marriage and divorce, living arrangements and mortality; labor market behavior; and
the effect of neighborhoods.

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II. MISSION

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NAVIGATING WITH MATHEMATICS
Asking strange questions can lead to huge impacts.
While science had “known” for centuries that two parallel
lines cannot meet, in the 19th century, some researchers
decided to work out what geometry would be like in a
world where parallel lines did meet. Now automobile
drivers and smart bombs take advantage of their
curiosity. It turns out that for accurate positioning, Global
Positioning System (GPS) satellites have to be corrected
for time dilation, a phenomenon associated with general
relativity. General relativity tells us that space-time is
curved, not flat, and the way to describe it is by using
non-Euclidian geometry, the mathematics of spaces in
which parallel lines can meet.

The National Science Foundation was established
by the NSF Act of 1950 (Public Law 81-507). NSF
adopted the purpose of that Act as its mission: “to
promote the progress of science; to advance the national
health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national
defense; and for other purposes.” This mission has
guided NSF’s activities ever since.
NSF promotes the progress of science by investing in
research to expand knowledge in science, engineering,
and education, and by investing in actions that increase
the capacity of the Nation to conduct and exploit science,
technology, education, and mathematics research. NSF
supports research on more effective approaches to
teaching and pilot activities to test them.
NSF advances the national health, prosperity, and welfare
through the contributions that NSF-funded research
makes to the well-being of the Nation. NSF research has
made possible many of the technological advances that
COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM
Why are extremist groups like ISIS so successful in
recruiting new fighters? Many dismiss extremists as
psychopaths or people seeking to achieve personal
gain. Based on interviews with extremists in war zones,
an NSF-funded researcher found that the truth is more
complicated. New recruits are often motivated by ethical
and moral beliefs, suggesting that strategies designed
to disrupt recruitment must include moral alternatives
to violent extremism as much as material ones, such
as access to economic opportunities. This research is
informing efforts by the Department of Defense and
other agencies to better counter violent extremism at
home and abroad.

have improved medicine, communications, transportation,
manufacturing, and the utilization of natural resources
(see insets).
NSF’s contributions to securing the national defense include
research in cryptography, cybersecurity, novel materials,
advanced analytics for massive datasets, and research that
helps troops communicate with populations in conflict zones.
Innovation is the creation and delivery of knowledge,
products, or services with lasting societal benefits. NSF
advances innovation through its funding of fundamental
research and programs that foster the translation of
scientific discoveries into new products or services. NSF
programs for student training and research partnerships –
between universities, industry, high-tech startups, and small
businesses – support the technologies of tomorrow and
speed new ideas from the lab to the marketplace.
As other countries rapidly advance the education and
training of their citizens in STEM fields, deploy highly
capable research infrastructure, and increase the

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resources devoted to research, NSF’s mission becomes
ever more important. If the U.S. is to remain competitive
in a world where economic and security advances
are increasingly based on sophisticated technologies
made possible by a deep scientific and engineering
understanding, then NSF must continue to invest in a
world-class research enterprise, support the development

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of a globally competitive scientific and engineering
workforce, and foster greater understanding of science
and technology among the American public.

B

Bar codes help supermarkets, airlines and many other industries determine what
products are marketed and where luggage should go. They are also used to help
detect and determine consumers’ buying trends. Scientists even tag penguins in
Antarctica with bar codes to make data gathering faster and more precise, helping
research into migration and penguin behavior.
NSF funding played a crucial role. In the early 1990s, research in computer vision
conducted at the State University of New York-Stony Brook led to major advances
in algorithms for bar code readers. That research led to commercial development
of a new product line of bar code readers, described as a revolutionary advance,
enabling bar code readers to operate under less than perfect conditions.

In the early 1970s, NSF-funded research identified glycoproteins as the
“antifreeze” in some Antarctic fish. These compounds inhibit the growth of
ice crystals, preventing damage to cells and tissues. Since this discovery,
researchers have found similar compounds in other cold-water fish, insects,
plants, fungi and bacteria. Because of the numerous potential benefits of
protecting tissue from damage by freezing, private companies have begun to
explore the use of these compounds to:
•
increase freeze tolerance of commercial plants;
•
improve farm fish production in cold climates;
•
extend shelf life of frozen foods; and
•
improve preservation of tissues for medical transplantation.

In the early 1990s, the Internet had fewer than 100 websites but the number was
growing and the need for accessible interfaces to this collection became clear.
To solve this problem, NSF led the multi-agency Digital Library Initiative (DLI). In
1994, the DLI made its first six awards, including a Stanford University project
led by professors Héctor García-Molina and Terry Winograd.
Early search engines began indexing Web pages using keyword-based techniques to rank the results. Stanford graduate
students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, created a new way to
search the Web by following links from page to page. They recognized that the act of linking one page to another required
conscious effort, which was evidence of human judgment about the link’s destination. Their new prototype could map out
a family tree reflecting the links among the Web’s pages. To calculate rankings on the tree, they developed the PageRank
method that would rank a Web page higher if other highly ranked Web pages linked to it.
Their prototype was funded by the DLI project and industrial contributions. By the end of 1998, Page and Brin received outside
funding and incorporated as Google, Inc.

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NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Next-generation Forestry and Crop Management
In the Western U.S., NSF-funded researchers deployed a unique set of
instruments, called the Internet of Trees Micrometeorological System, to
monitor how trees respond to repeated droughts at the cellular level and
across ecosystems. The researchers refined the instrumentation during the
study and, with funding from NSF’s Small Business Innovation Research
(SBIR) and I-Corps programs, began rolling it out for commercial use. The
new technology, called Arable, will help farmers and natural resource
managers collect data on rainfall, microclimate, etc. Pilots are underway
with large growers based in California and Australia.

New Gene-Editing Tool
NSF-funded researchers studying how a bacterium’s immune system fights off viruses
uncovered a powerful new gene-editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9. CRISPR-Cas9
acts like a pair of molecular-sized scissors that researchers can wield to snip a segment
of DNA; for example, to edit a segment that codes for a particular trait in an organism.
Biomedical researchers are exploring CRISPR-Cas9’s potential use for everything from
treating genetic disorders and developing targeted cancer therapies to preventing
vector-borne infectious diseases. The agricultural industry is also exploring whether
CRISPR-Cas9 can help enhance crop production and livestock survival. (See also ‘New
Enabling Technologies’ in Section V.)

Advancing Wireless Communications
The growing U.S. wireless industry, which reached nearly $192 billion in
2015, relies on advances in wireless communications technologies made
possible by NSF-funded research. One such advance is a discovery
made in 1992 that enables wireless devices to simultaneously receive
multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) data streams. MIMO
technology dramatically increases the performance of wireless systems,
allowing both higher data rates and wider coverage areas and underlies
today’s wireless networks (WiFi and LTE). This breakthrough was the
basis for two companies that pioneered 4G wireless communications and
WiMAX technologies and advanced the wireless communications sector.

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III. VISION

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TOMORROW’S COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS

A Nation that is the global leader in research
and innovation.
A growing share of the world’s economy and global
well-being relies on advances in technology and
knowledge derived from a deeper understanding of
the fundamentals of physical, biological, and social
processes. Greater access to information, and to
sophisticated tools with which to analyze it, is becoming
essential in a society that is increasingly knowledgedriven. Engineering and computer science increase
our ability to design for the future. Research in these
areas is vital to enhancing the security and resilience
of the Nation’s critical infrastructure. Technological
innovation provides improved methods to generate,
store, and manage energy.

To increase the appeal of computer programming for
young people, a team of NSF-funded researchers
created a visual computer programming language called
Scratch that allows users to develop software graphically
instead of tediously typing lines of code. Launched
a decade ago, Scratch helps children improve their
mathematics, computation and problem-solving skills, even
as they create games, animations and other fun projects.
The number of users continues to grow, and the resource is
used by students and teachers all over the world. In one
month, November 2017, over 1 million new projects were
created by over 400,000 individuals.
https://scratch.mit.edu/about

LEARNING LESSONS FROM HONEY BEES
Researchers mimicked the food foraging behavior of
honey bees to vastly improve how computer programs
and devices work together in a rapidly growing global
market worth over $50 billion. Just as honey bees
perform various tasks in a highly synchronized and
adaptable manner to benefit the colony, the researchers
designed a novel set of instructions to assign tasks to
multiple computer servers. Major web hosting companies
use the algorithm to analyze images, recognize objects
and text, retrieve documents, and more. The algorithm
also affects statistics, machine learning, data mining and
other areas of computer science and engineering.

Advances in our capability to observe, model,
comprehend, and predict the complexity of the world
around us will provide us with a deeper understanding
of the processes that underpin life, learning, and
society. They will also open new ways to harness
knowledge to enhance economic competitiveness and
human welfare. For example, the emerging abilities
to design inanimate materials at the molecular level,
and to integrate design with molecular biology, open
up new possibilities for engineered systems that
could revolutionize food production, healthcare, and
construction. This example illustrates the promise
of research in which experts from different fields
integrate their knowledge, data, and approaches
to pursue common challenges. Researchers are
increasingly pursuing collaborative, transdisciplinary
routes to discovery. To achieve NSF’s vision will
require us to invest in new areas of research and
learning and to adapt our approaches to fit the
evolving nature of research.

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TRADING WATER RESOURCES ONLINE
By 2025, two-thirds of the global population could
face water shortages. Conflicts over water management
are increasing, with large sums spent on litigation. To
ease these challenges, Mammoth Trading launched an
online market system to lease water rights. Mammoth
grew out of NSF-funded research on the economic and
environmental effects of groundwater pumping rights. It
provides new risk management tools for farmers, reduces
the cost of water reallocation, and leads to an increase
in agricultural productivity and profits, while maintaining
or improving environmental conditions and resource
sustainability. The approach could extend to other natural
resources as well.

The changing nature of work presents the Nation
with both opportunities and challenges. The
enabling and disruptive effects of innovation are
transforming the nature and scope of available jobs
with unprecedented speed. Technology has moved

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from the factory floor to an expanding array of
knowledge and service occupations. NSF has key roles
to play as society navigates this complex and evolving
landscape. NSF-supported research both contributes
the technological innovations that create these changes,
including designs motivated by social and behavioral
sciences research, and explores the evolving humantechnology workplace ecosystem.
To prosper from the changes in the nature of work and
to deal with the global impacts of the expansion in
human society, individuals’ education needs are much
greater than even a few decades ago. Now, they persist
throughout life and must accommodate the growing
pace of change in both work and workplaces. Renewing
knowledge and skills is essential. NSF’s investments in basic
research on how people learn, in the traditional period
stretching from pre-kindergarten to college as well as
continually throughout life, will be crucial to the advances
in U.S. education needed to ensure that the Nation thrives
in a rapidly evolving 21st century world.
Human society shapes the world around it. However,
recently, the scale and speed of society’s impacts have
become much larger and faster. Fundamental research
in economic, social, and behavioral sciences is vital to
provide the knowledge needed to understand how these
impacts are realized and to give policy-makers effective
tools to avoid or mitigate adverse outcomes. NSF helps
ensure that the U.S. remains at the forefront of research
and innovation in these sciences.

EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY THAT IS ROBUST AND RELIABLE
Crime investigators often rely on eyewitness testimony,
yet misidentification is a primary cause of convictions
of innocent people. NSF-supported scientists showed
that changing how investigators conduct eyewitness
procedures can reduce misidentification. Showing
witnesses photographs one at a time (not side by side)
and telling them the suspect may not be pictured are
ways to reduce false positives. Additionally, having an
officer who is unaware of the suspect’s identity conduct
these procedures reduces misidentification as the officer
is less likely to unintentionally convey information via
tone of voice or posture. The research led many states
to reevaluate their eyewitness procedures and the
Department of Justice to adopt new guidelines.

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February 2018

RESEARCH ON ROCK FRACTURES LEADS TO “FRACKING” REVOLUTION AND 725,000 JOBS
Terry Engelder, a structural geologist at Pennsylvania State University,
was interested in black shale. As a Philadelphia news article describes
it, “Terry Engelder spent most of his career toiling in obscurity, studying
fracture behavior of these rocks. Even among geologists, he says, it was
kind of a boring topic.”2
But Dr. Engelder found a natural process that broke the rocks. In 1983, he
wrote a research proposal to the National Science Foundation entitled, “A
test of the hypothesis that some joints formed as natural hydraulic fractures.”
His thinking was this: as mud rich in organic matter is buried and heated, the
organics break down, forming methane gas. The gas exerts pressure that
breaks the rock and creates fractures. He was awarded an NSF grant to
explore his insight. This research underpinned the development—30 years
later—of a major natural gas boom.
By 2008, horizontal drilling had been developed and hydraulic fracturing
techniques that had been developed in vertical wells were adapted to
horizontal wells. Suddenly, oil and gas were being recovered from shales
and other previously unproductive hydrocarbon-bearing rocks all across
the United States, from Appalachia to Texas and the Rocky Mountains.
Flow in pipelines changed direction to carry this new energy source to the
coasts for export. Energy prices dropped. New scientific questions arose—
about how to assess aquifer integrity, how to trace injected fluids, how
to evaluate the possibility of induced seismicity—and NSF has awarded
grants to additional researchers to explore these questions.
Our modern world has changed, quickly, in unexpected and unpredictable ways. And those changes built upon the
observations and ideas of an NSF researcher who didn’t set out to discover a new energy source. The geoscientist whose
papers once were scheduled on the last day of meetings found himself named a “top 100 global thinker” by Foreign
Policy Magazine.3
Job Creation: A National Bureau of Economic Research study4 found that the fracking boom added about 725,000 jobs
nationwide between 2005 and 2012, “Aggregating to the national level we conclude that aggregate employment rose by
725,000 jobs due to fracking, causing a reduction in the U.S. unemployment rate of 0.5 percent during the Great Recession,”
according to a Reuters article about the study.5
A more recent study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 21st Century Energy Institute says that, “the
extraction of ‘unconventional’ shale oil and gas through horizontal hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – has meant a job
boom even in states that don’t actually have shale deposits, with 1.7 million jobs already created and a total of 3.5
million projected by 2035.6
Andrew Maykuth, May 14, 2013, Shale made Penn State professor a star. www.philly.com, accessed April 16, 2015.
http://news.psu.edu/story/153476/2011/11/28/engelder-named-one-top-100-global-thinkers#nw1
4
James Feyrer, Erin T. Mansur, Bruce Sacerdote, NBER Working Paper No. 21624.
5
www.reuters.com/article/usa-fracking-employment-study-idUSL8N13159X20151106
6
www.energyxxi.org/us-chamber%E2%80%99s-fracking-job-boom-behind-numbers
2

3

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IV. CORE VALUES

assumptions; we evaluate our activities; we learn what
is effective and what can be improved.

NSF’s core values are essential and enduring tenets
that guide everyone in the organization as we support
the agency’s mission. They have been developed with
the active engagement of NSF’s staff and the National
Science Board. These values identify who we are
and what is important to us. They guide how we make
decisions, set priorities, address challenges, manage
tradeoffs, recruit and develop personnel, and work
together with our awardees.
NSF’s core values are ExPLICIT in what we do every day:
Excellence – We maintain the highest standards
in merit review, financial management, and award
administration. We use rigorous review by experts to
ensure that only the best ideas are funded and that
our investments further the national interest.
Public Service – We proudly value our role as public
servants, enabling the research community to blaze
new paths for expanding knowledge and addressing
societal challenges.
Learning – We take advantage of opportunities to
improve our skills and we provide all staff members
with opportunities to develop. We question our

February 2018

Inclusion – We strive to maintain a staff that is
representative of the broader national community.
We endeavor to support outstanding researchers
and innovative thinkers from across our Nation’s
diversity of regions, types of organizations, and
demographic groups.
Collaboration – We work in a collaborative enterprise
in which teamwork is essential. We value the
perspectives and values of our fellow team members
and recognize that combining our knowledge enables
us to find more robust solutions; we acknowledge
the contributions that we each make to our shared
success; we are committed to listening, communicating
effectively, and working collegially.
Integrity – We hold each other and our awardees
to the highest standards of ethical behavior. We
strive to ensure the trustworthiness of the results of
NSF-funded research by promoting the responsible
conduct of research.
Transparency – We operate with transparency
and openness.

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V. STRATEGIC PLANNING IN A
DYNAMIC CONTEXT

February 2018

Competing Globally
The value to society of the fruits of basic research is
recognized around the world. Most other developed
and many developing countries are increasing their
investments in fundamental research.

The context in which NSF develops its strategic plans
is constantly evolving. In this section, we describe the
significant factors and opportunities that shape our
goals and strategies.

To capitalize on scientific and technological advances,
countries need to prepare workforces with the
technical skills to take advantage of the opportunities
SIGNIFICANT CONTEMPORARY FACTORS
that these advances present. Maintaining American
Around the world, societies are transitioning to more
competitiveness requires that the American workforce
knowledge-based economies. Global observations of
receive the education and practical training in STEM
the natural and human environments are revealing the
that will be crucial in the new economy. NSF’s research
growing footprint of human society. Advances in science into how people learn, into the effectiveness of the
PULLING “DIAMONDS” OUT OF THE AIR
Carbon nanofibers are an exciting product of nano-technology.
Like diamonds, they are a very organized form of carbon.
Stronger and lighter than steel, they are being used in modern
airliners and boats. Their electrical properties have prompted
research on a wide range of applications in electronics and
batteries. Typical methods to produce this amazing material in
bulk are energy-intensive, making it very expensive.
NSF-funded researchers at George Washington University have
developed a process to capture carbon dioxide from the air
and use it to produce carbon nanofibers. The method requires
much less energy, is much less expensive, and has the potential
to transform a waste product of fossil-fueled power plants into a
valuable commodity.

and engineering are making possible new technologies
that accelerate opportunities for discovery and
change our interactions with each other. There has
been a growing appreciation of the potential for
convergent research in which many types of scientists
and engineers come together to bring a combined
array of perspectives and techniques to bear on
very challenging research questions with potentially
high pay-offs.
Developments such as these underline the importance
of continued investment in basic research in science,
engineering, and learning, and of ensuring that the
advances in understanding produced by research are
integrated into education.

new learning technologies that are available in an
increasingly digital and networked world, and into how
learning can continue throughout a person’s career,
is crucial if we are to exploit these opportunities and
maintain a competitive economy.
NSF invests especially heavily in STEM education
at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Education research illustrates the potential benefits
of transforming our approaches to graduate and
undergraduate training. Partnerships with industry
help focus how such training can be aligned with
the needs of a modern scientific and engineering
workforce. Modern scientific and technological
workplaces increasingly rely on diverse teams of

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individuals with the skills needed to work creatively
in groups. The ability to bring together concepts and
tools from different domains is critical to the solution
of complex problems. An understanding of data
science and analytics is becoming crucial in many
scientific and engineering domains. The infusion of
training in entrepreneurship into the undergraduate
and graduate experiences can speed the translation
of new discoveries into commercial applications. NSF
supports research to understand what approaches will
work, and catalyzes the adoption of these approaches
by U.S. colleges and universities. NSF’s research on
the science of broadening participation and programs
such as NSF INCLUDES develop understanding and
prototype tools that are effective in including all
Americans, rural and urban, women and men, minority
and majority, in pathways to STEM careers.
New Enabling Technologies
Throughout the history of science, novel technologies
have empowered scientists and engineers to make
huge leaps forward. In past eras, the clock and the
optical microscope both led to a string of discoveries
that stretch down to today. More recent examples
of technologies opening up new opportunities for
research are the digital computer, high-throughput
gene sequencers, gene-editing techniques, underwater
robots, advanced research ships, and exquisitely
sensitive detectors of ripples in space-time and cosmic
neutrinos. For example, CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing
techniques (see earlier inset), coupled with greater
understanding of molecular biological processes and
design principles from engineering, open up a whole
new realm of synthetic biology where both molecular
machines and novel organisms can be constructed.
These permit researchers to test theories about how life
works at the molecular and cellular level. They make
possible the development of a new bio-industry that
ranges from novel sensors for environmental chemicals
to new ways of manufacturing pharmaceuticals.
When it comes to providing America with state-of-theart research infrastructure with unique capabilities,
NSF plays multiple roles. It supports the basic research
that makes possible the design of new technologies;
it funds the development of ambitious new research

February 2018

infrastructure that creates new opportunities for
science, often a decades-long process; and it provides
researchers with access to cutting-edge instruments so
that they can pursue research never before possible,
creating the opportunity for new breakthroughs.
Data-Intensive Science
Digital technologies – the computer; fast, high-density
storage; and high-capacity, low-latency communications
networks – together with digitally-based sensing systems
and the shift of a great deal of human interaction to
the digital realm, have led to an unprecedented wealth
of data about the natural and human worlds, together
with powerful new techniques to analyze very large
quantities of data. While data have always been
at the core of science and engineering, these recent
advances have dramatically expanded the questions
researchers can ask and answer. To take just one
example, the ability to work with gene sequence data
from a whole community of microorganisms, from a
drop of ocean water or a sample of soil, has made
it possible to investigate the relationship between the
genetic make-up of an ecosystem and how it functions.
The potential of data-intensive science cuts across many
fields and is yet another emergent source of opportunity
in which NSF will invest in the years ahead.
The Role of Complex Systems
Society increasingly depends on complicated systems
that are products of humanity’s ingenuity. Examples
abound: software with millions of lines of code, the
globally distributed infrastructure that is the Internet,
next-generation electrical distribution networks,
globally entangled economic and financial systems,
modern cities, airplanes, and “smart” buildings are
just a few. Some are carefully designed, but many
develop more organically. Understanding and
predicting the behavior of such systems is just as
challenging as understanding the natural world. As
society’s reliance on complex systems grows, learning
about their robustness and understanding how to
strengthen them are of increasing importance.
Convergence Research
The world around us is a complex system with many
interacting parts and processes. The nonlinearity of

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Strategic Plan

many of the relationships among its components makes
understanding and prediction difficult, yet the world
around us has huge impacts on our quality of life.
The ebbs and flows of the global economy, changes
in the availability of water, and the emergence and
spread of agricultural and human pathogens are just
a few examples of how important it is to understand
the complex system formed by our natural world and
human society. We are learning that many of the
challenging research questions that confront society
can benefit from a convergence of the perspectives
and expertise of practitioners from different fields
of science and engineering. These span the range
from how to develop new health technologies, to
understanding the interplay between the availability
and distribution of food, energy, and water.

STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITIES
New technologies, the new availability of data, and
new, convergent approaches to doing science create
a wealth of opportunities. NSF will remain open to
creative ideas and novel approaches that exploit
these. We will continue to use the advice of external
experts and the knowledge of internal staff in our
rigorous merit review system to identify bold, promising
new ideas. We will not be afraid to take risks on
original ideas and we will nurture imagination and
risk-taking in the rising generation of researchers. We
will continue to invest in cutting-edge infrastructure
for research and in innovation in undergraduate and
graduate education.
While we cannot predict what new ideas will emerge
in the coming years, we can give examples of current
opportunities for dramatic advances.
The Quantum Leap: Leading the Next Quantum Revolution
The development of quantum mechanics in the early
20th century disrupted our understanding of the world.
It led to society-changing technological developments
such as solid-state electronics, particularly
semiconductors. The ideas of quantization, uncertainty,
and duality remain fresh, often counterintuitive, and
yet they describe and help us to predict the properties
of the world around us. Today we are on the threshold
of another quantum revolution, in which the power of

February 2018

quantum mechanics will enable new technologies to
transform science and society.
By exploiting quantum phenomena such as
superposition, entanglement, and squeezing, research
in this area will develop the foundations for and
enable quantum computing, quantum sensors, quantum
communications, quantum simulators, and other
inherently quantum technologies, and inform discussions
on the social impacts of quantum innovation.
Navigating the New Arctic
Rapid warming occurring in the Arctic is fundamentally
altering global climate, weather, and ecosystems in
ways that we do not yet understand, but which will
have profound impacts on the world’s economy and
security, as well as on indigenous peoples and other
Arctic residents. Further changes, including rapid loss
of summer sea ice, will bring new access for industries
and nations interested in Arctic natural resources
such as fossil fuels, minerals, and fisheries. Ice loss
from Greenland is increasingly affecting global and
regional sea levels. Changes to permafrost and
ecosystems are already disrupting Arctic societies.
An example of a high-impact, potential research
activity is the development of a state-of-the-art,
Pan-Arctic observing system. This would support the
predictive capabilities needed to address ongoing and
anticipated Arctic system changes and their global
influences and impacts. Such a system would include
advanced sensors and communication technologies able
to operate in harsh and remote locations throughout the
Arctic. Iterative exercises integrating observations and
simulations would contribute to optimizing the observing
system by refining data needs and simulation variables.
Arctic warming has far-reaching consequences that
include biological, natural, physical, social, and
man-made components throughout the Earth system.
NSF-supported research will strengthen the Nation’s
capability to understand rapid changes in the Arctic
region by using a systems-based approach, across the
full range of science and engineering disciplines, that
includes new sensors, wireless technology, and satellite
communication, as well as new research approaches.

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The Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier
Today we are engaged in a fourth industrial revolution
—a revolution that is bringing an abundance of
appealing goods and services, even as it changes the
nature of work. Advances in industrial technology have
provided consumers with high quality and lower prices
in manufactured goods while reducing the number
of workers required to produce those goods. In the
service sector, e-commerce brings a dizzying variety
of products to personal computers and smart phones
while transforming the retail sector. The dramatic pace
of change is exemplified by the personal transportation
industry where the innovations in mobile computing and
connectivity that made possible the ride-hailing model
are being followed by the emergence of autonomous
vehicles. Revolutionary artificial intelligence systems are
now positioned to transform the practices of finance, law,
and even medicine.
These trends are economically disruptive. NSF-supported
research can help us to understand the evolving humantechnology workplace ecosystem, and to provide the tools
to enable society to manage better this transformation,
mitigating negative consequences and reinforcing positive
outcomes. In doing so, such research will strengthen the
U.S. economy, improve worker performance and job
satisfaction, and facilitate life-long learning of new skills.
NSF has a key role in navigating this complex and everchanging landscape and in cultivating outcomes that
advance the quality of life of every American.
Understanding the Rules of Life: Predicting Phenotype
Imagine a world where we can forecast how life will
respond to a changing planet and where we guide
evolution to prevent the emergence of infectious
diseases and other nuisance species; a world where a
bio-economy uses bioengineered organisms to ensure
human and environmental well-being and provide a
safe and stable food supply; a world where genetic
and neurodegenerative diseases are a thing of the past.
Recent advances in understanding and shaping life at the
fundamental level of the genome places us on the cusp
of turning this vision into reality, of re-engineering cells,
organisms, and natural systems, and creating innovative
biomaterials and products that sustain a vibrant bioeconomy. Understanding the rules that govern how

February 2018

key features of life, such as robustness, resilience and
adaptability, emerge from the interaction of genome,
phenotype (the structure and properties of organisms),
and environment, through convergent approaches
harnessing a broad range of science and engineering
domains, has the potential to transform the world.
Decades of investment in genetics has brought society to
the point where we can read and edit natural genomes
with precision, synthesize complex genomes de novo,
and begin to understand how genetic endowment
contributes to complex phenotypes, including patterns
of behavior. This capability holds incredible promise
to benefit the Nation’s economy, and individual, social,
and environmental well-being. Delivering on this promise
requires a focus on discovering the rules that determine
how life’s properties (phenotypes) emerge from and
modify the interaction of genomes with their environment.
Recent discoveries, such as epigenetic mechanisms
and the role of microbiomes, new sensor and highthroughput measurement technologies, big data analytic
and computational capabilities, new technologies for
measuring and modifying neural activity, and advances
in the capabilities of synthetic biology, have transformed
our understanding of phenotype. This progress has
motivated a convergence of scientific, computational, and
technological approaches. Investing now in research to
predict and understand the emergence of phenotypes
capitalizes on this convergence to rapidly advance
understanding and enable societal benefits.
Developing a predictive understanding of how
key properties of living systems emerge from the
interaction of genomes, phenotypes, and environment
is an audacious goal, but one for which substantial
progress can be made through approaches that
leverage research from multiple disciplines.
Windows on the Universe: The Era of Multi-Messenger
Astrophysics
For millennia, humans have viewed the universe through
the optical part of the electromagnetic spectrum to which
our eyes are sensitive. Over the last half century, we
have extended that range to observe electromagnetic
radiation across the full spectrum from radio waves to
X-rays and gamma rays. Observatories constructed and

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Strategic Plan

operated over the past two decades have extended our
view to include high-energy particles such as neutrinos
and cosmic rays. Now, with the Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), researchers
are finally able to view the universe through gravitational
waves. Just as Galileo’s observation of the larger moons
of Jupiter through his early telescope ushered in a
revolution in our understanding of the universe, so the new
ability to detect gravitational waves heralds the dawn of
a revolution in astrophysics.
The three “messengers”—electromagnetic radiation,
high-energy astrophysical particles, and gravitational
waves—each provide a different view of the universe,
as if looking at the universe through a different “window,”
and reveal aspects that are invisible in the other windows.
Together, they paint a detailed picture. Looking through these
different windows, we will understand matter, energy, and
the cosmos in fundamentally new ways. Looking through
these “Windows on the Universe” will enable researchers to
address profound questions such as:
• How did the universe begin?
• Why is the expansion of the universe accelerating?
• What is the unseen matter that constitutes much of
the universe?
• How does gravity work under the most extreme
conditions?
• What are the properties of the most exotic objects in
the universe?
• How do matter and energy evolve to produce the
universe around us?
Harnessing the Data Revolution
With the rapidly increasing volume, variety, and
velocity of data, new and fundamental data-driven
research questions can now be addressed. At the same
time, experts project a shortage of individuals with
the skills necessary to understand and make decisions
based on the new approaches to data analysis. Future
generations of scientists and engineers must therefore
be trained to be able to fully realize the potential of
data-driven science and engineering. Stewardship and
management of research data will be crucially linked
to the credibility of research results and public access
to those results.

February 2018

Access to the next level of discovery relies on translating
complex data from observations, experiments, and
simulations into knowledge. To help close the loop from
data generation to analysis and on to simulation and
finally discovery requires: fundamental research in
data science and engineering; the development of a
cohesive, federated approach to the research data
infrastructure needed to power this revolution; and the
development of a 21st-century data-capable workforce.
Advances in these areas will enable new modes of
data-driven discovery, allowing researchers to ask and
answer new questions in frontier science and engineering
research, generate new knowledge and understanding,
and accelerate discovery and innovation. Individuals,
communities, and the Nation will benefit from new datarich capabilities, infrastructure, and services that will arise
as a result of research on data science and engineering.
Examples of science and engineering research that will
advance as we harness the data revolution include:
• Multi-messenger astronomy and understanding the
cosmos;
• Matter at the high energy and intensity frontier,
furthering discovery of the fundamental laws of
nature;
• Space weather prediction through data assimilation
and uncertainty quantification;
• Structural and functional properties of solid matter,
including synthesis, design, fabrication, analysis,
performance, and function;
• Complexity in biological systems;
• Biochemical engineering, including reconstructing
reaction pathways and optimizing catalysis;
• Smart and connected communities, including
enhancing smart civil infrastructure;
• Dynamic data systems, enabling sensing,
communications, and control; and
• Complexity in social, behavioral, and economic
systems.
As the examples above demonstrate, there is no shortage
of opportunities for investments in research that will
transform our world.

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February 2018

VI. STRATEGIC GOALS AND
OBJECTIVES

springs. A special role of NSF is to encourage broadly
creative efforts that may not fit within the domain of
specific mission agencies.

STRATEGIC GOAL 1
Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.

Proposals for research projects are competitively
reviewed for intellectual merit and broader impacts
by independent subject matter experts. NSF cultivates
the spirit of exploration in researchers and students.
Reviewers are encouraged to look for high potential
rewards that justify taking risks to support projects that
may not always work as planned.
NSF provides leadership in an evolving global

The first part of NSF’s mission is “to promote
the progress of science.” By expanding human
knowledge, NSF-funded researchers provide the
Nation with the capability to maintain scientific,
technological, and economic leadership in a
competitive world.

THE IMPACT OF CURIOSITY: ELECTROMAGNETISM

As Vannevar Bush pointed out, basic research is a capital
investment for the Nation: “Basic research leads to new
knowledge. It provides scientific capital. It creates the
fund from which the practical applications of knowledge
must be drawn. New products and new processes do not
appear full-grown. They are founded on new principles
and new conceptions that, in turn, are painstakingly
developed by research in the purest realms of science.”7
Those practical applications of knowledge are often not
fully felt until decades after the initial basic research.
A connection between fluid dynamics and an improved
industrial process may be easier to foresee than the
practical benefits of fundamental physics research into
what Einstein called, “spooky action at a distance,” but the
initial research on quantum mechanics in the early 20th
century prepared the ground for the development of new
approaches to secure communications and more powerful
computers that is underway in the 21st century.
Continuing the investment metaphor, just as modernday financial advisors stress the importance of
diversifying investments, so the benefits of research
are maximized when a wealth of different fields and
research questions are supported. NSF embodies
this philosophy by supporting all basic science and
engineering research with the exception of research
with specific, disease-related goals. NSF welcomes
proposals for original research, from individuals
and groups, and for new tools such as advanced
instrumentation, data analysis, computation, and novel
facilities. Investment in competitively selected projects
expands the knowledge base from which innovation
7

In the early 19th century, researchers were curious
about whether an electrical current flowing through a
wire would influence a nearby compass needle. Several
showed that it did and the science of electromagnetism
was born. At first, this was simply an interesting natural
phenomenon. Seeking to understand it, scientists
conducted experiments, developed theories, and learned
how to predict the interaction between electricity and
magnetism. Without their curiosity, today we would not
have electric motors, computer memory, modern trains,
planes and automobiles, many hospital technologies, the
Internet, television, or the telephone.

research enterprise by supporting modern,
collaborative approaches to science, by funding
research within and between traditional fields, and by
strengthening interactions between U.S. researchers
and their leading counterparts abroad. By supporting
workshops and using novel funding mechanisms for
exploratory research, NSF catalyzes and incubates
new fields of research and the search for new insights
that disrupt traditional understanding.

V. Bush (1945). “Science: The Endless Frontier.” Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, vol. 48, pp. 231-264.

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Strategic Objective 1.1 – Knowledge
Advance knowledge through investments in ideas, people,
and infrastructure.
NSF’s core objective is to improve the collective
understanding of the universe we inhabit. To
achieve this, we invest in people who are curious,
courageous, and collaborative. We seek the best
research ideas, both those that advance current
understanding and those that disrupt it. We
support emerging paradigms such as convergence
research. We support world-class scientific facilities
for the Nation’s researchers at home and abroad.
We support the development and acquisition of
research platforms and tools such as advanced
instrumentation and cyberinfrastructure.
The outputs of these investments are new insights
into the natural, built, and human world. They are
captured and disseminated in research papers in
journals and conferences, patents, new approaches
to education and training, as start-up enterprises,
and in technology licenses.
Strategic Objective 1.2 – Practice
Advance the practice of research.
NSF seeks to advance the state of the art in research
by encouraging smart risk-taking, cultivating an
inclusive research culture of exploration, embracing the
adoption of convergence as an approach to discovery,
and supporting new modes of research practice.
There is growing consensus that some of the most
intractable problems in the scientific, technological, and
social arenas require perspectives and approaches
from multiple disciplines. Indicators include the
proliferation of multidisciplinary institutes and centers
in academia and the private sector, new faculty hires
with joint appointments, and the merging of university
departments. NSF has long recognized the potential
synergies that result in such settings and the creativity
that collaborative research and “team science” can
bring to addressing some of society’s most pressing
research challenges.

February 2018

Convergence research, together with open data sharing
among disparate disciplines, can lead to unprecedented
breakthroughs and nucleate entirely new disciplines. The
implementation of the convergence paradigm involves
framing challenging research questions at inception
and fostering the long-term collaborations needed for
successful inquiry. NSF remains committed to maintaining a
wide variety of mechanisms for supporting collaborative
and interdisciplinary research at scales from small teams
to multi-institutional centers.
Particularly high-risk but potentially transformative
research proposals that cross disciplinary boundaries
can be submitted as Research Advanced by
Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE)
proposals and reviewed internally. Ideas Labs
encourage out-of-the-box, collaborative approaches
to meet pressing research challenges. Realizing that
cutting-edge interdisciplinary research projects may be
perceived by reviewers as too risky, NSF continues to
implement review processes tailored to interdisciplinary
research and to enhance efforts to identify and recruit
reviewers with experience in cross-cutting research.
Working with the research community, NSF promotes
the use of best practices to ensure that research
is reproducible, including emphasizing the open
availability of results and the data that support them.
NSF will promote a research culture that is broadly
inclusive in its demography and range of intellectual
ideas, has access to cutting-edge infrastructure, and
is globally engaged, with increased opportunities
for exchanging ideas and collaborating on an
international scale. NSF will increase opportunities
for broadening the training of U.S. graduate students
and early-career researchers through international
exchanges and partnerships with industry.
STRATEGIC GOAL 2
Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current
and future challenges.
This goal flows from the latter part of the NSF mission
statement—”to advance the national health, prosperity,
and welfare; to secure the national defense; and
for other purposes.” Through workshops, targeted

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solicitations, and core programs, NSF helps focus the
attention of the research community on fundamental
aspects of high-priority national challenges. We
support researchers in identifying particularly urgent
questions and opening up new avenues to address
these priorities. We provide funding to pursue better
understanding of specific challenges that confront
society. We enable collaborative teams to apply the
methods of convergence research. These approaches
promote impact-driven, use-inspired research.

February 2018

This strategic goal echoes the “broader impacts” merit
review criterion that was developed by the National Science
Board. Within this strategic goal, NSF also seeks to advance
the state of the practice of achieving broader impacts.

Innovation is a key capability for the Nation. NSF’s
investments in science and engineering research
and training foster innovation across a broad range
of topics relevant to technological and economic
competitiveness. Examples include advanced
manufacturing, the design of innovative materials
and building technologies, infrastructure resilience
and sustainability, decision-making, cyber-security,
and data analytics. Through its Innovation Corps
(I-Corps) program, NSF fosters a national innovation

Progress towards this goal often necessitates the
formation of partnerships with industry, other agencies,
and international sponsors to build capacity, leverage
resources, and increase the speed of translation
from discovery to innovation. NSF explores novel
mechanisms to cultivate training in entrepreneurship
among students and faculty, to facilitate the
development of connections between academia and
industry that can hasten the transfer of ideas between
the two, and to accelerate innovation.
By funding the participation of undergraduates, graduate
students and post-doctoral associates in research projects,
as well as by providing graduate and post-doctoral
fellowships and research experiences for undergraduates,
K-12 students and teachers, NSF supports the

NSF’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program prepares
scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the
laboratory, and broadens the impact of select, NSFfunded, basic-research projects.
I-Corps teaches NSF grantees to identify valuable product
opportunities that can emerge from academic research,
and offers entrepreneurship training to participants by
established entrepreneurs through a targeted curriculum. It has immersed more than 1100 teams of scientists and engineers
from over 230 universities in over 46 states and Puerto Rico in entrepreneurial training to extend their focus beyond the lab to
the commercial potential and broader impact of their research. As a result, I-Corps participants have launched 440 startups,
which have raised over $250 million in seed capital.
The I-Corps program helps researchers translate discoveries into technologies with near-term benefits for the economy and society.
“I-Corps was eye opening. We interviewed 150 people in the gaming, movie and music spaces. We had some idea after
I-Corps that we needed certain things to get ready for the market.”
Ramani Duraiswami, co-founder, VisiSonics. I-Corps Team December 2012

ecosystem by encouraging institutions, scientists,
engineers, and entrepreneurs to identify and
explore the innovation and commercial potential of
their research.

development of the next generation of researchers,
scholars, and knowledge workers. It prepares both future
research leaders and a STEM workforce that is equipped
with up-to-date knowledge and the experience needed
to address society’s current and future challenges.

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The educational dimension is a key aspect of this
strategic goal. NSF supports research on STEM
education, and on effective approaches to preparing
a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce and a
STEM-literate citizenry.
An important component of capacity-building is ensuring
that all sectors of society have the opportunity to
participate in and contribute to the Nation’s research
enterprise. The 2011-2012 report of the Committee on
Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE)
requested that NSF launch a bold, new initiative for
broadening participation with the goal of eventually
having the participation of NSF-supported scientists and
engineers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
(STEM) fields mirror the population of the Nation. NSF is
committed to broadening participation by:
• Preparing a diverse, globally engaged science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics workforce;
• Integrating research with education, and building
capacity;
• Expanding efforts to broaden participation from
underrepresented groups and diverse institutions
across all geographical regions in all NSF activities;
and
• Improving processes to recruit and select highly
qualified reviewers and panelists that reflect the
Nation’s diversity.

February 2018

NSF’s mission does not end there. In order to fulfill the
second part of our mission, to advance the national
prosperity, we must continue to invest in fundamental
research that: (1) connects new knowledge to
innovations that drive the Nation’s competitiveness,
thereby fueling the Nation’s economic growth; and
(2) addresses present and emerging societal needs.
NSF will continue to pursue connections between
new insights and global challenges (often involving
essential interdisciplinary collaborations, prototypes,
and technologies).
One approach to developing these connections is
through partnerships to promote and catalyze the

Through programs such as NSF ADVANCE and NSF
INCLUDES and their successors, NSF strives to foster
institutional transformation within research organizations
so that the Nation can capitalize on the talents and ideas
of all parts of the population, in all parts of the country.
NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive
Research (EPSCoR) seeks to advance research capacity
in States that have traditionally received relatively small
proportions of the federal research budget.
Strategic Objective 2.1 – Societal Impacts
Support research and promote partnerships to accelerate
innovation and to provide new capabilities to meet
pressing societal needs.
The first part of NSF’s mission, as expounded by the
first strategic goal, is to create new knowledge and
expand the Nation’s intellectual capital. However,

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PAWR: PLATFORMS FOR ADVANCED WIRELESS RESEARCH

The Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR)
program is an NSF-led public-private partnership to
advance the development of next-generation wireless
technologies and services. In 2016, NSF convened a
consortium of over 30 leading companies and industry
associations in the wireless sector, to include networking
vendors, device manufacturers, and wireless carriers.
Beginning in 2017, NSF is investing $50 million over 7
years, together with an additional $50 million in cash
and in-kind contributions from the industry consortium,
to design, develop, deploy, and operate four wireless
research platforms.
At the scale of entire communities or cities when
fully deployed, these wireless research platforms
will allow academic researchers, entrepreneurs, and
companies to test, prove, and refine next-generation
wireless algorithms, technologies, and services in
real-world settings. Ultimately, PAWR will serve as
a key approach for sustaining U.S. leadership in
wireless networking over the next decade, enabling
experimentation that is simply not feasible through
testing in university laboratories alone.

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IMPROVING KIDNEY EXCHANGE

February 2018

3-D GEOLOGIC MAP LEADS TO PRECIOUS METAL DISCOVERY

An NSF-funded economist applied the principles
of game theory to the problem of matching kidney
recipients with donors, laying the groundwork for
today’s national kidney exchange program. To date,
the program has saved more than 4,000 lives in the
U.S.—a number that continues to grow.

Using technology for 3-D electronic mapping originally
developed by scientists working in the McMurdo Dry
Valleys of Antarctica, NSF-funded researchers developed
new insights about processes of magma crystallization
which were in turn used to develop a new crystallization
model. This new magma crystallization model was then
used by exploration geologists to discover one of the
world’s largest precious metal deposits in northern
Minnesota. The Nokomis Deposit is estimated to contain
metal resources of approximately 10 billion pounds of
copper, 3.1 billion pounds of nickel, 165 million pounds
of cobalt, 4 million ounces of platinum, 9 million ounces of
palladium and 2 million ounces of gold.

MORE RELIABLE AUTOMOBILE TRANSMISSIONS
Automatic transmissions allow cars and trucks to travel
at sustained speeds. Their core technology, the oneway clutch, at one point failed more than any other
component in some lines of automobiles. Los Gatos,
California based Epilogics, a small business funded by
NSF’s SBIR program, developed a newer Mechanical
Diode One-Way Clutch and licensed it to Means
Industries. Means used it to replace the older oneway clutch, and it became the most successful, active,
driveline component. More than 30 million Mechanical
Diode One-Way Clutches have been installed.

translation of research into application. NSF will exploit
partnerships with other government agencies, academia,
and private and international entities. Such partnerships
leverage NSF’s resources, promoting efficiency while
avoiding duplication of effort. They help ensure that
fundamental research outcomes are translated into
benefits to society.

To accelerate both research and innovation, it is critical
to make results and knowledge widely available. NSF
will continue to promote the rapid and wide dissemination
of the results of NSF-funded research with no or minimal
restrictions from publication embargoes. It will encourage
the exploitation of novel means of disseminating new
knowledge. It will expand its efforts to ensure that the
data cited to support published research are readily
available to other researchers and are well curated.
Access to data is important not only so that others can
build on published results but also so that key results can
be tested to ensure that they are reproducible.
Strategic Objective 2.2 – STEM Workforce
Foster the growth of a more capable and diverse
research workforce and advance the scientific and
innovation skills of the Nation.
Investing in the development of future generations of
researchers and a scientifically skilled workforce is one
of NSF’s most important approaches to advancing the

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Strategic Plan

discovery and innovation skills of the Nation. The Nation’s
global competitiveness depends critically on the readiness
of the Nation’s STEM workforce. NSF will continue to invest
in programs that directly advance the STEM workforce. It
will also invest in research on what the workforce of the
future will require and on improved methods to provide
the requisite skills and diversity.

February 2018

of ideas and approaches that drive discovery and
innovation in a way that would be impossible without
this diversity.
The research in learning in which NSF invests is
aimed at both formal and informal pathways.
Formal education through the Nation’s K-12 schools
provides the foundation for citizens’ understanding

NSF GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWS
Through its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), NSF has
funded thousands of graduate researchers, many of whom have made
important discoveries while still in graduate school. For example, an
NSF Graduate Research Fellow developed a touch screen to recognize
multi-finger gestures for computer input—using two fingers on a screen
to zoom in and out—a breakthrough technology that is now ubiquitous
in smartphones and other mobile devices. Since 1952, this program has
supported 42 students who went on to win Nobel Prizes.

NSF invests in post-doctoral, graduate, and
undergraduate research training through funding
for research projects, research centers, and research
fellowships, and by providing research experiences for
undergraduates at home and abroad. These investments
help prepare the next generation of researchers to
seek answers to the next generation of challenges. To
strengthen the links between pre-college teaching and
the frontiers of knowledge, NSF also supports research
experiences for educators.

of STEM and its uses in addressing the needs of
society. The formal education process continues
through our Nation’s colleges and universities, where
scholarship is the hallmark. Informal education is
another powerful means to provide learning and
instill interest in STEM topics in everyone throughout
their lives. Citizen science, for example, fosters
informal education and engages citizens in a
meaningful, gratifying way, while also advancing
science. NSF invests in research on education that is
intended to develop more effective approaches to

Institutions of higher education in the U.S. play
an important role in educating a diverse STEM
workforce beyond preparing students for careers in
research. NSF invests in research on ways to improve
graduate and undergraduate education to prepare
students to participate in the Nation’s scientific and
technological workforce.
The effectiveness of NSF’s investments to contribute to
the Nation’s STEM workforce through research training
depends on the inclusion of people who traditionally
are underrepresented in the scientific enterprise. A
STEM workforce that reflects the diversity of our
society is essential for the emergence of a rich set

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Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, NSF has supported
the training of 2,200 cybersecurity experts through
the CyberCorps®: Scholarships for Service program,
which seeks to recruit and train the next generation of
information technology professionals.

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Strategic Plan

February 2018

M

Web-based platforms enhance teaching and learning in the classroom.
Today, 100,000 students across the U.S. use an online mathematics
tutoring and assessment program developed by an NSF-funded
researcher. Called ASSISTments, the innovative platform helps students
with their mathematics coursework and teachers with their mathematics
instruction. In Maine, a recent study involving more than 2,800 students
at 43 public schools found that the use of ASSISTments for a year was
associated with significantly increased student scores on an end-ofthe-year standardized mathematics assessment when compared with
a control group. Students with low prior mathematics achievement
benefited most.

B

NSF has long supported the development of a diverse workforce
that understands foundational concepts of computing and information
science and engineering, knows how to develop new computing and
information methodologies and tools, has the capacity to interact with
all sectors of our society, and is fully prepared to lead the 21stcentury digital economy.
As part of these efforts, NSF funded the development of a new
Advanced Placement® (AP®) Computer Science Principles (CSP)
exam. Thousands of K-12 teachers and university faculty contributed
to an 8-year effort leading to the course framework, AP exam,
aligned instructional materials, and teacher professional development
(PD). The first official AP CSP exam was held in May 2017 and was a
record-breaking success:
• The 2016-17 CSP launch was the largest launch of any AP course in the 60-year history of The College Board’s AP
program: over 2,500 schools offered AP CSP courses, and they combined to enable more than 50,000 students to take
the exam.
• The initial data confirmed that rigorous CS, taught in an engaging and inclusive manner, can attract a more diverse population of
students. Compared to participation in the existing AP CS exam (CS A), African American participation was 7% in CSP (versus
4% in CS A); Hispanic participation was 19% (versus 11%), and female participation was 30% (versus 24%).
Several NSF-funded projects developed CSP instructional materials and PD aligned to the CSP framework. The three largest
are endorsed by The College Board and are scaling nationally, having provided PD to over a thousand new CS teachers: the
Beauty and Joy of Computing, Mobile CS Principles, and UTeach CS Principles.

engaging the public and to help citizens to develop a
better understanding of science and the scientific process.
NSF’s investments in research on STEM education extend
the reach of its science and engineering programs by
paving the way to integrating their results into modern
approaches to learning.
Through tailored, capacity-building programs, NSF
enhances the ability of specialized institutions to
draw diverse communities into research and the STEM
workforce. Specialized programs can also help the

Nation meet emergent needs for a workforce trained in
the new results of research in areas such as cyber-security.
STRATEGIC GOAL 3
Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
The first two strategic goals are associated with quickly
evolving challenges. Meeting these and effectively
fulfilling NSF’s mission requires blending strong scientific
leadership with robust organizational leadership. Both
are characterized by vision and flexibility. NSF will

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February 2018

provide its staff with the resources that are essential
to carry out the agency’s activities. NSF’s management
objectives have the goal of achieving organizational
excellence through a continuous emphasis on efficiency
and efficacy. NSF’s employees strive to ensure that
NSF’s programs are effective and accountable, that the
merit review process is of high quality and integrity,
and that financial management and award oversight
are rigorous without undue administrative burden.

diverse. While NSF strives to help prepare a diverse,
globally competitive STEM national workforce and
STEM-literate citizenry, these goals are also reflected
inward. As an agency, NSF cultivates an increasingly
adaptable, highly skilled, and engaged workforce
that harnesses the diverse perspectives and creativity
needed to achieve high levels of efficiency and
effectiveness. This will ensure that the agency’s
workforce matches its current and future needs.

Our core strength is our people, and the agency is
committed to recruiting, retaining, and deepening the
expertise and capabilities of our entire workforce.
We embrace an inclusive, diverse, and continually
changing workforce. NSF’s commitment to the innovative
management of agency operations leverages the
creativity of NSF staff with the opportunities provided
by advances in information technology and training. We
aim to drive continuous improvements in our programs,
processes, and systems, while providing stable, highquality service and support to all of our stakeholders.
We also strive to align operational plans, budgets, and
management practices with agency goals and priorities.
In this way, we create a common vision that permeates the
many functions of NSF and enhances the performance of
both individuals and internal organizations.

To be an effective organization, NSF cultivates
capabilities that enable it to be nimble and innovative in
a changing scientific and technological environment.
From recruitment, to training, to retention of its
administrative professionals, scientists, and engineers, NSF
strives to enhance the agility of its dedicated personnel.

NSF has identified four key areas where advances will
enhance our ability to achieve our mission. The first, in the
area of workforce management, focuses on the alignment
of the workforce and the work:
• Adapting the NSF workforce to the work.
The remaining three are focused on increasing efficiency
and effectiveness:
• Making information technology work for us;
• Expanding public and private partnerships; and
• Streamlining, standardizing, and simplifying programs
and processes.
Strategic Objective 3.1 – Human Capital
Attract, retain, and empower a talented and diverse
workforce.
Excellence as a federal agency begins with a
workforce that is engaged, highly capable, and

Adapting the NSF Workforce to the Work
Systematically reviewing the NSF workforce from
top to bottom will enable NSF to revise position
descriptions that are outdated or that do not reflect
current and future work responsibilities. In this
modernization effort, NSF will identify the portfolio
of skills needed in today’s work environment and the
opportunities created by new, emerging skills. The
results of the review will provide a framework for
planning workforce hiring, training, and development
that will enhance the ability of our workforce to meet
the NSF mission efficiently and effectively.
NSF uses various hiring authorities to create a
balanced workforce of permanent and rotating staff
members. The recruitment and promotion processes
are strengthened by internal training on the nature
of unconscious bias and techniques to mitigate
it. Diversity in backgrounds and perspectives is
a powerful resource; NSF strives to maintain a
workforce that is inclusive at all levels and in all
units within the Foundation.
Through an emphasis on leadership training, coaching,
and detail assignments, NSF nurtures the development
of in-house managerial talent from within its ranks
to complement the opportunities provided through
external hiring. By recruiting rotators from academia
and elsewhere, by the active engagement of

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permanent staff in professional society conferences
and research community workshops, and through its
Independent Research/Development program, NSF
maintains its essential, strong connection to the forefront
of science, engineering, and education research.
A high performing workforce is crucial to the fulfillment
of NSF’s mission. NSF provides a wide array of
continuous learning opportunities for staff members that
strengthen the capacity of the Foundation. In addition
to opportunities for external training, NSF maintains
a strong internal resource, the NSF Academy, that
develops and disseminates cutting-edge information
aimed at enhancing the agency’s human capital. In
keeping with its aspiration to be a high-performing
organization, NSF provides opportunities for its
employees to learn how to work more efficiently and
more creatively, furthering their skills in collaborative
work, communication, and other tools to enable them to
work in highly effective teams. NSF rewards exemplary
performance through a variety of employee recognition
programs. NSF provides its managers with the requisite
toolkit for managing effectively, offering opportunities
to learn and enhance skills that are tailored to new and
experienced managers, as appropriate. The people
who work at NSF learn and grow in important ways that
contribute to the organization as a whole and enable
NSF to function as a model federal agency.

February 2018

improvement in business processes, financial
management, and associated infrastructure. This may
include the pursuit of partnerships and shared services
as a means of promoting excellence and efficiency, as
well as innovation in support of a mobile workforce
and the use of remote work practices.
NSF employs data-driven decision-making. Through
an internal evaluation and assessment capability and
through the use of tools such as strategic reviews, NSF
will expand its capabilities to assess the performance
and impacts of its business processes and programs.
Making Information Technology Work for Us
New information technologies and systems are
available to drive our science and engineering mission
forward in a more nimble, efficient structure. Cloud
resources and shared service providers offer the
potential for new efficiencies. New developments
in software offer potential improvements in our
core processes such as merit review and financial
management. To continue funding cutting-edge science,
engineering, and education research, we will exploit
leading-edge information technology solutions that can
adapt easily and quickly to our needs.

Strategic Objective 3.2 – Processes and Operations
Continually improve agency operations.

The potential for expansion of capabilities for analysis
and knowledge management offers an opportunity
that NSF will pursue vigorously. These are needed not
only to assess internal operational performance and
processes, but also to track and anticipate trends in
research and to monitor and oversee progress in the
construction of major facilities. NSF program officers
and reviewers need high-quality information systems
to enable the outstanding merit review process that
undergirds NSF’s global reputation.

In order to accomplish its mission in research and
education while maintaining its outstanding stewardship
of taxpayer resources, NSF requires a wide range of
operational and administrative services. These include
human resource management, procurement, information
technology (IT), financial management, program
management, project management, and administrative
support. Built on a commitment to openness and
transparency, we will follow a strategy of continuous

Also essential is maintaining a safe and secure physical
and cyber environment. NSF relies heavily on IT for all
of its processes - financial transactions, merit review,
and personnel records - but IT is also the gateway to
communication and interaction with stakeholders in
the research community. As trends towards a mobile
workforce and remote work continue, IT will only
become more important and critical to maintaining an
agile and excellent organization.

NSF promotes strong internal and external
communications, ensuring staff and community
stakeholders are both engaged in and informed about
organizational change.

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Streamlining, Standardizing, and Simplifying Programs
and Processes
NSF is committed to promoting efficiency and
effectiveness by streamlining, standardizing, and
simplifying programs and processes. This encompasses
both our internal operations and the administrative and
compliance requirements associated with our programs.
This commitment is in keeping with the Administration’s
emphasis on reducing burden for Federal agencies,
as described in OMB memo M-17-26 (Reducing
the Burden for Federal Agencies by Rescinding or
Modifying OMB Memoranda, June 15, 2017). It is vital
that we review our processes to determine whether
established tasks and requirements achieve their
intended result in an efficient and effective manner.
The requirements associated with NSF’s program
investments warrant a similar review. This was
emphasized in the National Science Board’s 2014
report Reducing Investigators’ Administrative Workload
for Federally Funded Research (NSB-14-18). The
Board found that “for more than a decade, surveys and
reports have highlighted an increase in administrative
and compliance requirements associated with Federal
research.” (Page iv.) NSF will work internally and with
the Office of Management and Budget and other science
agencies to find opportunities to reduce administrative
burden. For example, we will pursue the use of just-intime submission of proposal components that are not
needed for the initial parts of the merit review process.
Expanding Public and Private Partnerships
As noted in Strategic Objective 2.1, partnerships are
one means to accelerating innovation and providing
new capabilities to meet pressing societal needs.
Partnerships with other federal agencies, private
industry, foundations, and international organizations
are an important means for NSF to maximize the
_____________________
2014 American Academy of Arts & Sciences report, “Restoring the Foundation:
The Vital Role of Research in Preserving the American Dream,”
www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/researchpapersmonographs/
AmericanAcad_RestoringtheFoundation_Brief.pdf.
9
2015 Mathematical Sciences Research Institute report, “Partnerships: A Workshop
on Collaborations between the NSF/MPS & Private Foundations,” http://library.msri.
org/msri/Partnerships.pdf.
10
2016 Computing Community Consortium report, “The Future of Computing
Research: Industry-Academic Collaborations,” http://cra.org/ccc/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/15125-CCC-Industry-Whitepaper-v4-1.pdf.
8

February 2018

scientific, economic, and societal impacts of its
investments. Partnerships are increasingly essential to
advancing convergence science. The benefits of the
expanded partnerships include leveraging expertise
and resources in pursuit of innovations; enhancing
research, education, and workforce capacity; and
improving translation from discovery to products and
services that benefit society. Partnerships among
federal agencies enable synergies in areas where
agency missions intersect. Engagements with private
industry and foundations have the potential to
accelerate areas of mutual interest and enhance the
preparation of the next-generation workforce.8,9,10
Presently, the formation of partnerships is a timeconsuming and resource-intensive process; government
and agency processes can present obstacles and
disincentives. We will explore process enhancements
that facilitate an expansion of inter-agency and
public-private partnerships, and work with stakeholders
to remove barriers. We will identify important areas
of science and engineering ripe for joint investment
with the private sector and other partners and
work to establish new partnerships in these areas.
We will build on existing models of success, which
have included joint solicitations with industry and
international funders, and the creation of large-scale
consortia. (For an example, see the inset describing
PAWR on page 20.)
Managing Risk
NSF embraces enterprise risk management. This is
applied throughout the life cycle of our awards and
to our management of facilities awards, our physical
and cyber security, and to our other operational
processes. NSF has a dynamic organizational structure,
which has enabled it to quickly and effectively adapt
to transformations in the science, engineering, and
education landscape. This structure also enables NSF
to form effective partnerships across government,
academia, and industry. This dynamism and the
philosophy of striving for continuous improvement
reflect an organization that is constantly learning and
evolving. We have a workforce that is in constant
transition, with a significant proportion of the scientific
staff serving as rotators for one- to four-year terms.
Maintaining resilience in such an environment requires

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NSF to continue to identify and manage associated
risks and opportunities. Examples of areas of risk and
opportunity that we manage include staffing, continuity
of operations, fluctuations in appropriations, physical
and cyber security, emerging national priorities, and
technological advances.
We will encourage the use of methodical
risk analysis across the Foundation, including:
identification, ranking, analyzing, tracking,
controlling, and mitigating risks; development of
associated contingency management plans; and
planning and implementation of strategies that

February 2018

effectively manage and mitigate risk factors.
Management challenges identified by the Inspector
General will be integrated into this risk management
framework. NSF will continue to promulgate a
highly consultative culture, in which appropriate
stakeholders are engaged early and throughout risk
management processes.
As part of our risk management framework, we
will develop and maintain a risk profile that
provides an analysis of the most significant risks and
opportunities bearing on our ability to achieve our
strategic objectives.

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VII. AGENCY PRIORITY GOAL
A Performance Plan for FY 2019 has been developed
in concert with this Strategic Plan. It includes the
following Agency Priority Goal.
Expand public and private partnerships to enhance
the impact of NSF’s investments and contribute to
American economic competitiveness and security.
By September 30, 2019, NSF’s number of partnerships
and/or award actions with other federal agencies,
private industry, and foundations/philanthropies will
grow by 5 percent, relative to the FY 2017 baseline, to
make available infrastructure, expertise, and financial
resources to the US scientific and engineering research
and education enterprise.
Partnerships with private industry, foundations,
international organizations, and other federal

February 2018

agencies are an increasingly important means for
NSF to maximize the scientific, economic, and societal
impacts of its investments. In meeting this goal, NSF will
improve the effectiveness of its investments by joining
forces with industry and private foundations, and with
other agencies with common goals, to optimize the
development of scientific and engineering knowledge
and its delivery to the economy.
The benefits of expanded partnerships include
leveraging expertise and resources in pursuit of
innovations; enhancing research, education, and
workforce capacity; and improving translation from
discovery to products and services that benefit
society. Partnerships among federal agencies enable
synergies in areas where agency missions intersect.
Engagements with private industry and foundations
have the potential to accelerate areas of mutual
interest and enhance the preparation of the nextgeneration workforce.

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VIII. EXAMPLES OF LONG-TERM
PERFORMANCE GOALS
The foundation of NSF’s Performance Plan rests on a
set of performance goals. Each of the performance
goals in the Performance Plan is associated with one
or more strategic objectives in the Strategic Plan and
will be reviewed annually in the strategic reviews
as well as in quarterly performance reviews. These
performance goals were created to provide a means
by which NSF leadership can provide strategic
monitoring and oversight of progress being made
on the Foundation’s most important activities: our
priority program investments, research infrastructure
investments, the satisfaction of proposers and
reviewers, and key management initiatives. In addition
to the Agency Priority Goal described above,
brief descriptions of three examples of long-term
performance goals from NSF’s FY 2019 Performance
Plan are included here.
1. Ensure that key FY 2019 NSF-wide program
investments are implemented and on track.
Each year, NSF highlights a number of cross-agency
investments in the NSF-Wide Investments chapter of
its Budget Request to Congress. Although the overall
impact of these investments will not be realized
for many years, tracking near-term indicators of
implementation and progress can help the agency

February 2018

make formative changes or course corrections. This
has been a goal since FY 2014. The list of monitored
programs evolves based on investment priorities for a
particular year.
2. Ensure program integrity and responsible stewardship
of major research facilities and infrastructure.
NSF monitors the performance of major facility projects
by monitoring cost and schedule variances using
Earned Value, a standard measure of performance for
construction projects.
3. Inform applicants whether their proposals have been
declined or recommended for funding in a timely manner.
An important factor for principal investigators is the
time it takes NSF to process proposals - the amount
of time that passes between receipt of a proposal
and notification to the principal investigator about
the funding decision. Too long a time period delays
the progress of research, but too short a time period
may weaken the merit review process by forcing
premature decisions. The optimal dwell time depends
on a number of factors including the complexity of
the proposed activity, the need for co-review by
more than one program, the need for site review,
infrastructure requirements of the proposed activity,
and the potential size of the award. Large, complex
proposals require more time under review to ensure
that taxpayer dollars are invested wisely.

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IX. CORE STRATEGIES
To achieve its strategic objectives, NSF uses a number
of core strategies. Since the creation of NSF, a
robust menu of such strategies has been developed
by the NSF staff under the oversight of the National
Science Board (NSB) and Congress, and in concert
with the communities NSF serves. These evolve as NSF
continuously seeks to improve its internal processes
through internal innovation and by adapting effective
approaches developed by other funding organizations.
Within this context, the core strategies by which NSF
addresses its mission are summarized below. Some
are associated with the identification of areas for
investment, some guide the selection of research
projects for funding, and some are associated with
enhancing agency operations.
OVERVIEW
NSF fulfills its mission by advancing discovery,
preparing the STEM scholars of tomorrow, and
continuously strengthening the Nation’s innovation
ecosystem. It does this by encouraging, receiving,
reviewing, and funding proposals for specific
activities. NSF receives about 50,000 proposals
for research funding each year and 16,000
graduate research fellowship applications in
virtually all areas of science, engineering, and
education research. Since the agency can fund
only a fraction of the meritorious proposals and
applications received, NSF strives to maintain a
balanced, geographically distributed portfolio
of funded projects that: supports different
approaches to significant research questions;
addresses societal needs through basic research
findings and related activities; builds capacity in
new and promising research areas; supports highrisk proposals with potential for transformative
advances in a field; integrates research and
education; and broadens participation in STEM
research. The review and decision process must
be carried out with integrity and transparency to
maintain trust that the resulting decisions are fair,
forward-looking, and represent an optimal use of
the limited resources available.

February 2018

INVESTMENT AREAS
Based on its strategic goals, NSF works with the
research community and other stakeholders to
identify key areas for future investment. These
areas may reflect emerging opportunities of great
promise, address pressing challenges, or respond to
critical national needs. They may involve NSF-wide
activities and require sustained levels of investment
over many years, or they may be more narrowly
focused and change from year to year as promising
opportunities arise.
NSF receives input on the identification and
prioritization of investment areas from many sources.
These are described in more detail in the next chapter,
“Evidence Building.” NSF emphasizes using a variety
of mechanisms to envision the future of science and
engineering through the eyes of the world’s frontline researchers. These include the National Science
Board, the National Academies, advisory committees,
workshops, calls for white papers, and other community
engagement activities.
Potential investment areas are evaluated against
considerations that include the following:
•

Alignment with NSF’s Mission. Does the investment
area further NSF’s mission, vision, goals, and
objectives as established by the NSF Strategic Plan,
without duplicating the efforts of other agencies or
funding organizations?

•

Budget. Factors include whether the proposed level
of investment is consistent with the opportunity, level
of risk, relevance, and potential impact.

•

Potential for impact. Examples of important factors
include the extent to which investments: may transform
a field of science or engineering; are broadly
significant or of great interest to the community;
position the U.S. at the forefront of an emerging
field; promote teaching, learning, mentoring, training
and outreach; contribute to national research
and development priorities; sustain economic
competitiveness; support the national defense; or
enable other socially important outcomes.

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•

•

•

•

Strategic Plan

Urgency and readiness. Important factors include
whether timing is critical to achieve optimum results,
or investment is necessary to maintain long-term
stability and progress in critical areas.
Integration of research with education and
strengthening the connections between learning
and inquiry. Significant factors include whether
investment areas present a rich environment for
encouraging future scientists, engineers, and
educators, and whether they provide opportunities
for teachers and students to participate in research
activities at the K-12, undergraduate, graduate,
and postdoctoral levels.
Broadening participation. Important factors include
whether the investment area contributes to
increasing the diversity of the U.S. population that
participates in research and research training.

AWARD PORTFOLIO
Proposals for individual research projects are evaluated
using the merit review criteria provided by the National
Science Board. NSF strives to maximize the collective
impact of these projects by using the following strategies:
Maintaining a balanced portfolio that provides
opportunities for original research in all fields of
science, engineering, and learning;

•

Maintaining the public’s trust by operating with
transparency, accountability, and integrity;

•

Maintaining NSF’s high-quality merit review
process, while seeking continuous improvement;

•

Partnering with other science sponsors and
professional organizations;

•

Welcoming interdisciplinary proposals and
proposals that pursue novel approaches;

•

Using, where appropriate, quantitative or other
evidence-based evaluation of programs and
investment areas;

•

Maintaining up-to-date digital tools and business
systems; and

•

Complementing the expertise of NSF’s permanent
staff with the knowledge and up-to-date
experience of leading researchers and educators
on temporary assignment to NSF.

AGENCY OPERATIONS

Collaborations. Important factors include
whether investments create opportunities for
national and international partnerships, or
augment other NSF activities, or leverage
other community, industry, federal agency or
international investments in research, education,
and infrastructure. By using such partnerships,
NSF avoids duplication and increases the
efficiency of its investments.

•

February 2018

Efficiency and Effectiveness
NSF brainstorming exercises produced strong
suggestions for improving the efficiency and
effectiveness of NSF through actions in three areas.
We will increase efficiency and effectiveness by:
• Making IT work for us:
o Harness new information technologies to
enable us to achieve our mission more
efficiently;
o Leverage state-of-the-art IT solutions from the
private and public sectors to develop flexible
tools that support the formation of agile work
teams, to drive changes in the way research
is solicited, identified, and funded, and to
ensure ease of use by internal and external
users;
o Take advantage of cloud resources and
shared services that offer the potential for
new efficiencies; and
o Exploit new developments in software
to improve the implementation of core
processes such as merit review and financial
management.

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•

•

Strategic Plan

Expanding public and private partnerships:
o Streamline agency processes to remove
obstacles and disincentives to the formation
of partnerships that are increasingly essential
to advancing convergence research;
o Catalog existing NSF partnerships and
identify the best practices for building on
these and the challenges to be addressed;
o Modify current policies and practices that
impede the establishment of partnerships;
o Clarify terms and mechanisms for joint
investments and partnerships such as
donations, memoranda of understanding, and
interagency agreements;
o Streamline interagency activities; e.g.,
simplify the joint analysis of proposals and
awards across federal agencies;
o Explore other financial transfer authorities,
providing alternate funding delivery
models, beyond those that have been used
traditionally by NSF; and
o Establish new partnerships in research areas
of special emphasis.
Streamlining, standardizing, and simplifying
programs and processes:
o The tremendous variety in research topics
and cultures has led to a decentralized
structure within NSF. Where appropriate,
we will move to more consistent and
standardized processes and program
structures, streamlining decision-making,
and making it easier to review and fund
cross-cutting research.
o NSF’s fine-grained structure of programs, with
their often rigid definitions and deadlines,
can present an obstacle to the submission
of unusual ideas. We will diminish such
obstacles by reducing the use of deadlines
and introducing opportunities for proposals
unconstrained by topic area.

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February 2018

Workforce Management
The changing nature of research, together with changes
in the way we use information technology, expand our
use of partnerships, and streamline our programs and
processes, highlights the importance of aligning the
skills and strengths of our workforce with this evolving
landscape. We will pursue a strategy of:
• Adapting the NSF workforce to the work:
o As science changes, we will augment the skills
of the workforce with those needed to function
effectively in more integrated, cross-cutting
settings.
o We will review and revise position descriptions
to reflect the work responsibilities and
portfolio of skills needed in today’s work
environment, and look for opportunities
created by the emergence of new skills.
o We will develop a framework for recruitment,
training and development that will enhance
the ability of the workforce to meet the NSF
mission efficiently and effectively.

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Strategic Plan

X. EVIDENCE BUILDING

ADVISORY COMMITTEES
Each directorate has an external advisory committee
that typically meets twice a year to review and advise
on program management, discuss current issues, and
review and provide advice on the impact of policies,
programs, and activities in the disciplines and fields
encompassed by the directorate or office.

NSF employs a variety of methods to develop
evidence that is used to inform its strategic planning,
assess progress on strategic objectives, and examine
program effectiveness.
MANAGEMENT REVIEWS
Each quarter, NSF senior leadership reviews
progress towards all performance goals of the
agency in a data-driven review meeting led by
the Chief Operating Officer and Performance
Improvement Officer.
PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
NSF uses a balanced set of performance indicators,
milestones, and measures. Due to the nature of
NSF investments, the assessment of progress on its
first two strategic goals tends to be based on output
or outcomes. The third, more management-oriented
goal is assessed with efficiency and customer-service
measures, but also output and outcome measures
relating to long-term activities such as strategic human
capital management and diversity.
STRATEGIC REVIEWS
NSF’s Strategic Review Process uses the results of
existing assessments, evaluations, and reports as
well as other sources of evidence such as analysis
of administrative data. Because the Strategic
Objectives in the NSF Strategic Plan are crosscutting and do not mirror our organizational
structure, the strategic reviews are also cross-cutting
and conducted as cross-Foundational activities.
The process draws upon existing, comprehensive
assessment processes that already exist at NSF.
For example, the periodic Merit Review Report to
the National Science Board and the Committees of
Visitors (COV) process, described below.
NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD
The National Science Board (NSB), whose members
are appointed by the President, reviews NSF’s
strategy, programs, and plans. It receives and
acknowledges NSF’s annual submission to the
President’s budget.

February 2018

In addition to directorate advisory committees, NSF
has several committees that provide advice and
recommendations on specific topics: astronomy and
astrophysics; environmental research and education;
equal opportunities in science and engineering;
direction, development, and enhancements
of innovations; polar programs; advanced
cyberinfrastructure; international science and
engineering; and business and operations.
COMMITTEES OF VISITORS
Committees of Visitors (COVs) are subcommittees
of NSF directorate advisory committees. They
provide NSF with external expert assessments of
the quality and integrity of program operations,
program management, and the breadth of program
portfolios. COV reviews are conducted at intervals
of approximately four years for programs and
offices that recommend or award grants, cooperative
agreements, or contracts and whose focus is the
support of research and education activities.
A Committee of Visitors typically consists of a group
of external experts, selected to ensure independence,
programmatic coverage, and geographic balance. COV
members come from academia, industry, government,
and the public sector. Each COV prepares a report that
is submitted to the parent advisory committee and thence
to NSF. NSF provides the advisory committee with a
response to the COV recommendations. The reports and
responses are public and posted on NSF’s website.
EVALUATIONS
NSF’s directorates and program offices commission
external evaluations of major programs and
investments. Large projects, such as centers and
facilities, undergo rigorous post-award evaluation by
teams of external experts and NSF staff.

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NSF recently established an Evaluation and Assessment
Capability (EAC). Data and analytical tools
developed by EAC inform NSF’s strategic reviews. To
enhance NSF’s ability to develop evidence to guide
planning and decision-making, EAC assists directorates
commissioning external assessments of specific program
areas. In the lifetime of this strategic plan, such
assessments have the potential to improve NSF’s design
and implementation of cross-cutting program activities.
EAC also provides training to NSF staff members to
help them plan and use evaluations and assessments
more effectively.
DECADAL SURVEYS AND COMMUNITY
WORKSHOPS
An important source of input for identifying new
research opportunities and prioritizing program
investments are extended planning efforts undertaken
by specific science and engineering communities. In
some areas, such as astronomy and ocean sciences,
these are referred to as “decadal surveys” and help
prioritize which infrastructure investments are of highest
priority for the field. In many domains, community
planning often features workshops that draw together
researchers in the field and produce reports that
highlight new opportunities. In some instances, such as
the visioning workshops organized by the Computing
Community Consortium, a dialogue between industry
and academia is involved.
NATIONAL ACADEMY STUDIES
The National Academies of Science, Engineering,
Public Administration, and Medicine often undertake
assessments of the state of a field, or promising
directions for federal research investments, or provide
advice about business and operational processes.
PUBLIC COMMENTS
In developing this strategic plan, NSF invited feedback
on the major elements of the FY 2014 – FY 2018 NSF

February 2018

Strategic Plan from the public, academia, industry, and
professional science and engineering organizations.
The comments received were summarized and used
by the strategic plan writing team as it prepared the
current plan.
MERIT REVIEW REPORT
NSF prepares a biennial statistical summary of the
operation of the merit review process. This includes
information on the number of proposals submitted,
success rates, average award sizes and durations, and
the diversity of proposers, awardees, and reviewers.
The report is provided to the National Science Board,
pursuant to Board resolutions 77-150, 84-114 and
2017-32. The Board reviews and publishes the
document. By capturing trends, the report is valuable
for identifying sources of stress in the merit review
system. This information has stimulated the piloting
of a number of potential enhancements to the merit
review process. The effects of these merit review pilots
are also described in the Merit Review Report.
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEY
From time to time, NSF conducts a survey of the
researchers who submit proposals and those who
review them. This information has proven helpful
in understanding what changes to the merit review
process are likely to have a significant impact.
Beginning with the survey in 2015, NSF has begun
conducting this survey biennially.
OTHER SOURCES OF EVIDENCE
Other sources of information that have been useful
to NSF in both strategic planning and in refining its
internal business processes include internal working
groups, reports from the Government Accountability
Office, and the results of the annual Federal
Employment Viewpoint Survey.

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APPENDICES
APPENDIX A.1.
STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
The first phase of the development of the updated
strategic plan began in 2016 and included gathering
suggestions from numerous stakeholders about how
the current strategic plan should evolve. That process,
together with plans for future stakeholder engagement
is summarized below.
•

•
•
•
•

•
•
•

From August to December 2016, NSF invited
people inside and outside the Foundation to
provide comments on the existing strategic plan.
This included discussions among NSF staff, with the
National Science Board, with external advisory
committees, and an open invitation to professional
societies and organizations to provide input.
Through an online portal, NSF received over 100
public comments.
NSF developed a skeleton draft of the updated
strategic plan and discussed this with the National
Science Board at its February 2017 meeting.
A high-level summary of the revised strategic
goals and objectives was shared with the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) in June 2017.
A preliminary draft of the Strategic Plan
incorporated suggestions received through the public
portal, from advisory committees, from the National
Science Board, and from NSF staff members. It was
submitted to OMB in September 2017.
After receiving feedback on the draft Strategic Plan
from OMB, NSF shared the draft with Congress.
Additional feedback was provided by the National
Science Board in November 2017.
The final version of the strategic plan will be
provided to Congress in February 2018.

APPENDIX A.2.
CONTRIBUTING PROGRAMS
The GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 requires
each agency to develop an inventory of all
federal programs. In response to this requirement,
NSF categorized its federal programs by initial
topic area of investment. This approach mirrors its

February 2018

budget structure and the programs presented here
are consistent with the program activity (PA) lines
presented in the President’s Budget Appendix. This
aligns with the way the agency executes its budget
and is complementary with the expectations of
external stakeholders. The ordering of this list follows
the budget structure, with programs funded through
the two program accounts (Research and Related
Activities and Education and Human Resources) listed
first, followed by Major Research Equipment and
Facilities Construction, Agency Operations and Award
Management, National Science Board, and the Office
of Inspector General.
LIST OF NSF STRATEGIC GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
2018 – 2022
Strategic Goal 1
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering,
and learning.
Strategic Objective 1.1 – Knowledge
SO1.1. Advance knowledge through investments in
ideas, people, and infrastructure.
Strategic Objective 1.2 – Practice
SO1.2. Advance the practice of research.
Strategic Goal 2
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet
current and future challenges.
Strategic Objective 2.1 – Societal Impacts
SO2.1. Support research and promote partnerships to
accelerate innovation and to provide new capabilities
to meet pressing societal needs.
Strategic Objective 2.2 – STEM Workforce
SO2.2. Foster the growth of a more capable and
diverse research workforce and advance the scientific
and innovation skills of the Nation.
Strategic Goal 3
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
Strategic Objective 3.1 – Human Capital
SG3.1. Attract, retain, and empower a talented and
diverse workforce.
Strategic Objective 3.2 – Processes and Operations
SG3.2. Continually improve agency operations.

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February 2018

LIST OF PROGRAMS
Biological Sciences (BIO)
Program
Biological Sciences (BIO)
Title
Program
This activity promotes scientific progress in biology through support of research on all levels,
Description including molecules, cells, organisms, and ecosystems, and interactions across these levels of
organization.
The Divisions within the Directorate for Biological Sciences are:
• Biological Infrastructure (BIO/DBI)
• Environmental Biology (BIO/DEB)
• Emerging Frontiers (BIO/EF)
• Integrative Organismal Systems (BIO/IOS)
• Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (BIO/MCB)

Supported
Strategic
Goals
Supported
Strategic
Objectives

Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2

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February 2018

Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
Program
Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
Title
Program
This activity supports investigator-initiated research in all areas of computer and information
Description science and engineering that advances society, helps develop and maintain advanced
cyberinfrastructure to enable and accelerate discovery and innovation across all disciplines,
and contributes to the training of the next generation of computer and information scientists and
engineers with skills essential for success in the increasingly competitive global market.
The divisions and offices within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and
Engineering are:
• Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC)
• Computing and Communication Foundations (CISE/CCF)
• Computer and Network Systems (CISE/CNS)
• Information & Intelligent Systems (CISE/IIS)
• Information Technology Research (CISE/ITR)

Supported
Strategic
Goals
Supported
Strategic
Objectives

Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2

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February 2018

Engineering (ENG)
Program
Engineering (ENG)
Title
Program
Research supported by this activity aims to increase U.S. engineering capability and strength,
Description
and focus that capability and strength on areas that are relevant to national problems and
long-term needs. This activity also includes small business innovation research.
The Divisions within the Engineering Directorate are:
• Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (ENG/CBET)
• Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (ENG/CMMI)
• Electrical, Communications, and Cyber Systems (ENG/ECCS)
• Engineering Education and Centers (ENG/EEC)
• Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (ENG/EFRI)
• Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (ENG/IIP)

Supported
Strategic
Goals
Supported
Strategic
Objectives

Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2

Geosciences (GEO)
Program Title Geosciences (GEO)
Program
This activity supports research and associated infrastructure to advance knowledge of the
Description
properties and dynamics of the planet on which we live. Research includes understanding the
causes and implications of climate change, as well as disruptive processes such as earthquakes
and storms.
The divisions within the Geosciences Directorate are:
• Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (GEO/AGS)
• Earth Sciences (GEO/EAR)
• Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (GEO/ICER)
• Ocean Sciences (GEO/OCE)
Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
Supported
Strategic
Goals
Supported
Strategic
Objectives

SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2

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February 2018

Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS)
Program
Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS)
Title
Program
This activity supports research and infrastructure directed at increasing understanding of
Description natural laws and phenomena across the astronomical sciences, chemistry, materials sciences,
mathematical sciences, and physics.
The divisions within the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate are:
• Astronomical Sciences (MPS/AST)
• Chemistry (MPS/CHE)
• Materials Research (MPS/DMR)
• Mathematical Sciences (MPS/DMS)
• Physics (MPS/PHY)
• Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (MPS/OMA)
Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
Supported
Strategic
Goals
Supported
Strategic
Objectives

SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2

Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE)
Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE)
Program
Title
Program
This activity supports research and infrastructure in the social, behavioral, cognitive, and
Description economic sciences and funds the collection and dissemination of statistics on the science and
engineering enterprise.
The Divisions within the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate are:
• Social and Economic Sciences (SBE/SES)
• Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (SBE/BCS)
• Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (SBE/SMA)
• National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (SBE/NCSES)

Supported
Strategic
Goals
Supported
Strategic
Objectives

Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2

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February 2018

Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE)
Program Title Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE)
Program
This activity promotes an integrated strategy for international science and engineering that
Description
complements and enhances NSF’s broader research and education goals and facilitates international collaboration.
Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
Supported
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
Strategic
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
Goals
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2
Supported
Strategic
Objectives
Office of Polar Programs (OPP)
Program Title Office of Polar Programs (OPP)
Program
This activity supports Arctic and Antarctic research and operational science support and other
Description
related activities for United States polar research programs, including the funding to reimburse
Federal agencies for logistical and other related activities supported by the United States
Antarctic Program (USAP).
Research investments span the range of all NSF research Directorates. In addition, the USAP
provides critical support that enables research and scientific observations in the Antarctic
sponsored by NASA, NOAA, USGS, DOE, and DOD (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
monitoring).
Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
Supported
Strategic
Goals
Supported
Strategic
Objectives

SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2

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February 2018

Integrative Activities (IA)
Program
Integrative Activities (IA)
Title
Program
This activity supports emerging cross-disciplinary research efforts, major research instrumentation,
Description capacity-building, planning, and policy support. This activity also provides support for the Science
and Technology Policy Institute. The Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research
broadens participation of States and regions in science and engineering by helping institutions
expand their research capacity and competitiveness.

Supported
Strategic
Goals
Supported
Strategic
Objectives

The subactivities housed within the Office of Integrative Activities are:
• Evaluation and Assessment Capability (EAC)
• Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR)
• Graduate Research Fellowships (GRF)
• HBCU Excellence in Research (HBCU EiR)
• Major Research Instrumentation (MRI)
• Planning and Policy Support
• Science and Technology Centers (STC)
• Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI)
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2

United States Arctic Research Commission (USARC)
United States Arctic Research Commission (USARC)
Program
Title
Program
The United States Arctic Research Commission promotes Arctic research and recommends
Description national Arctic research policies to guide Federal agencies in developing and implementing
their research programs in the Arctic region.
Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
Supported
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
Strategic
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
Goals
Supported
SO1.1; SO2.1
Strategic
Objectives
Note that USARC is an independent agency that is included in NSF’s program inventory but not covered by the NSF
strategic plan.

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February 2018

Education and Human Resources (EHR)
Program
Education and Human Resources (EHR)
Title
Program
This activity supports a comprehensive set of programs in all areas of science, technology,
Description engineering, and mathematics (STEM), at all levels, inside and outside of school, to build a
diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce and a STEM- literate citizenry. EHR invests in
research and development on STEM education and learning, and in scholarships and fellowships
to build the STEM workforce.
The divisions within the Education and Human Resources Directorate are:
• Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (EHR/DRL)
• Graduate Education (EHR/DGE)
• Human Resource Development (EHR/HRD)
• Undergraduate Education (EHR/DUE)

Supported
Strategic
Goals
Supported
Strategic
Objectives

Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2

Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC)
Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC)
Program
Title
Program
The Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction activity supports the acquisition,
Description construction, and commissioning of unique national research platforms and major research
facilities and equipment. Performance of each construction project is measured against an
established baseline at regular intervals and at major milestones.
Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
Supported
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
Strategic
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
Goals
Supported
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO3.2
Strategic
Objectives

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February 2018

Agency Operations and Award Management (AOAM)
Program
Agency Operations and Award Management (AOAM)
Title
Program
This account funds NSF’s scientific, professional, and administrative workforce, the physical and
Description technological infrastructure necessary for a productive, safe, and secure work environment, and
the essential business operations critical to NSF’s administrative processes.
Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
Supported SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
Strategic
Goals
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
Supported SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2
Strategic
Objectives
Office of the National Science Board (NSB)
Office of the National Science Board (NSB)
Program
Title
Program
This appropriation provides policy-making and related responsibilities for NSF, and provides
Description guidance on significant national policy issues in science and engineering research and education,
as required by law.
Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
Supported
SG1. Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning.
Strategic
SG2. Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.
Goals
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
Supported
SO1.1; SO1.2; SO2.1; SO2.2; SO3.1; SO3.2
Strategic
Objectives
Office of Inspector General (OIG)
Program Title Office of Inspector General (OIG)
Program
This appropriation provides agency-wide audit and investigative functions to identify and
Description
correct management and administrative deficiencies that create conditions for existing or
potential instances of fraud, waste, and mismanagement, consistent with the Inspector General
Act of 1978, as amended (5 U.S.C. App. 3).
Current information about the activity can be found
at https://nsf.gov/about/budget/.
Supported
SG3. Enhance NSF’s performance of its mission.
Strategic
Goals
Supported
SO3.2
Strategic
Objectives

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Strategic Plan

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Strategic Plan

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IMAGE CREDITS
Cover: NSF/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet
Page 6: John W. Harvey, National Solar Observatory
Page 7: (top to bottom) David Göthberg, Sweden; karelnoppe/Shutterstock.com
Page 8: University Communication/University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Page 9: (top to bottom) Courtesy of U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory; Panel Study
of Income Dynamics (PSID)
Page 10: (top to bottom) NASA; U.S. Army
Page 11: (top to bottom) byggam.se/Shutterstock.com; Paul A. Cziko, University of Oregon; courtesy of Google
Page 12: (top to bottom) Arable Labs, Inc.; Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley; pixelrain/
Shutterstock.com
Page 13: (top to bottom) Georgia Computes! Georgia Tech; ©iStock.com/bbraley
Page 14: (top to bottom) Ian Kluft, CC BY-SA 3.0; Photographee.eu/Shutterstock.com
Page 15: David R. Gribble, CC BY-SA 3.0
Page 17: Stuart Licht, Ph.D.
Page 22: Fouad A. Saad/Shutterstock.com
Page 24: I-Corps
Page 25: Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR)
Page 26: (left top to bottom) S2N Media; ©iStock.com/Henrik5000; (right) Ruth Schulte, USGS
Page 27: (top to bottom) ©iStock.com/Ridofranz; CyberCorps
Page 28: (top to bottom) ASSISTments; michaeljung/Shutterstock.com

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www.nsf.gov
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