The U.S. National Science Foundation strives to harness the power of public and private partners, including other federal agencies, industry, philanthropy, nonprofits, and international organizations, to accelerate discovery and innovation and achieve greater impact than any one organization alone.
NSF enters into direct partnerships — formal arrangements to coordinate and commit financial and in-kind resources, expertise, and infrastructure — to achieve mutual goals that advance fundamental research, accelerate the translation of discoveries into applications, and deliver broad economic benefits. Organizations can work directly with NSF to create innovative pilots and programs. These partnerships focus on shaping and supporting pilots and programs, rather than receiving funding to conduct research or programmatic work.
Partnerships are a strategic priority for NSF. This commitment is reflected in the NSF "Annual Performance Plan and Report," with performance goals, indicators of progress, and a dedicated partnership strategy.
Begin a partnership with NSF
Submit an expression of interest to the NSF Strategic Partnerships Hub to explore how your organization may directly partner with NSF to support pilots and programs by sharing expertise and contributing resources such as funding, facilities, data, and/or compute access.
Who we partner with
NSF partners with organizations that also believe leadership in science and technology is fundamental to advancing national health and prosperity and to securing the national defense. Partners frequently collaborate with each other and with NSF on shared priority areas.
Before developing a partnership, NSF thoughtfully evaluates partnership opportunities to ensure alignment with NSF's mission, responsibilities, and long-term impact using NSF Partnership Guiding Principles. Before developing a partnership, NSF thoughtfully evaluates partnership opportunities to ensure alignment with NSF's mission, responsibilities, and long-term impact using NSF Partnership Guiding Principles.
If you are not seeking to partner directly with NSF by sharing funding or resources but rather wish to submit a proposal for NSF support and are looking for others with whom you can partner, please visit the NSF Research Partnerships page to find a complementary program.
NSF's partnerships with philanthropic and nongovernmental organizations advance bold ideas and expand the reach of science while delivering broad public benefit. These collaborations create space for innovation, flexibility, and new approaches.
NSF's partnerships with philanthropic and nongovernmental organizations aim to:
- Initiate emerging research areas and innovative fields.
- Pilot new approaches and proof-of-concept initiatives.
- Bring together broad communities of researchers, educators, and practitioners.
- Pool public and private resources to share the risks of early-stage research.
- Accelerate promising ideas toward scalable impact.
NSF and industry partner to accelerate research and the translation of discoveries to the market. These partnerships enhance the impact of shared investments — advancing innovation while ensuring scientific progress serves the broader public good.
NSF's industry partnerships aim to:
- Accelerate fundamental research and expand its impact.
- Speed the transition of discoveries from the lab to the marketplace.
- Support the development of a skilled, future-ready workforce.
- Connect industry with the nation's academic research community.
- Leverage intellectual property resulting from jointly funded activities.
NSF partners with other federal agencies to advance shared priorities. These partnerships align and amplify resources, expertise, and infrastructure to tackle complex challenges. This ensures taxpayer dollars are used efficiently and effectively while moving research into real-world impact.
NSF's governmental partnerships aim to:
- Advance shared scientific and educational priorities.
- Leverage facilities, data, and specialized expertise.
- Reduce duplication and streamline proposal review processes.
- Co-invest in high-impact, mission-aligned projects.
- Share knowledge to accelerate discovery and innovation.
NSF actively engages in international partnerships with global counterparts to enhance America's scientific leadership. These partnerships enable the U.S. to play a key role in shaping the international science and engineering agenda and drive innovation to address the most pressing worldwide issues of the day.
NSF's international partnerships aim to:
- Leverage international investments in research areas of critical importance.
- Provide the U.S. research community with opportunities to work with researchers who share common interests, complementary expertise, and unique perspectives.
- Provide U.S. researchers and educators with access to unique, world-class facilities, infrastructure, data, and field sites.
- Expand reach for U.S. researchers by enabling them to study and pilot solutions to global challenges both at home and abroad.
- Cultivate a globally engaged and competitive science, technology, engineering, and mathematics workforce.
The benefits of partnering with NSF
Partnerships enable collaborators to leverage NSF's complementary strengths to advance high-impact science, technology, and education.
Each partner brings their own unique strengths to the table. Depending on the nature of the partnership, these are some features NSF brings forward as well:
- Connecting to an expansive community of researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and educators.
- Gaining the opportunity to create NSF programs aligned with shared priorities.
- Amplifying impact on shared priorities through strategic co-investment.
- Accessing NSF's world-class merit review process, ensuring rigor, fairness, and excellence.
- Participating in initiatives designed to address challenges and innovate at a national scale.
What partnerships can look like
Partnerships with NSF are flexible and designed around shared goals. The agency works collaboratively with organizations to identify the right model based on organizational strengths, priorities, and capacity. While some partnerships involve a single organization, NSF often brings together leaders from across sectors to collaborate on shared programs or initiatives.
Models may include co-funding initiatives, developing joint programs, sharing facilities or data, or contributing in-kind resources such as expertise, cloud credits or computing time. Partners can join an existing effort, develop a new track within a current program, or co-create something entirely new.
Partnerships could include, but are not limited to:
- New standalone program.
- Expansion of existing programs with new focus areas.
- Supplements to current NSF awardees.
- Prize challenges where teams compete to solve specific problems.
- Workshops, conferences or training.
- Offering in-kind resources (e.g., software licenses, cloud computing access).
- Exchange of talent or thought leadership.
There is no single model — only a shared commitment to advancing meaningful impact together.
Partnership impacts
Enhancing AI-focused K-12 math learning with philanthropies
Improving wireless communications and intelligent network systems with multi-sector partners
Speeding AI and AI-powered discovery and innovation with multi-sector partners
Strengthening understanding, prediction and resilience to wildland fires with multiple partners
Training and expanding the U.S. workforce with Micron Technology
How we develop partnerships
NSF's four-stage partnership process offers a clear path for turning ideas into meaningful collaboration and impact, accounting for everything from relationship development to the mechanics of building and managing a partnership.
1. Discover
Early discussions focus on shared priorities, capabilities and constraints to identify common ground, mutual interest, and benefit to both groups.
2. Align
Once agreement is reached on a topic or focus area of mutual interest, the partnership is formalized through a memorandum of intent (MOI), a broad document signaling intent to collaborate and share resources. Using the NSF MOI template, the agreement can generally be developed and signed in less than a month.
3. Design
NSF and partners collaborate to co-develop the program focus, how the program will run, and how decisions about resource sharing, including data, funding, facilities, and other in-kind assets, will be made. Decisions are summarized in a partnership management plan (PMP) that describes NSF and partner roles and responsibilities, including the partner's desired level of involvement with NSF and the subsequent proposals and awardees, shared resources, and timelines.
4. Deliver
The partnership is now in action, ready to create opportunities for groundbreaking discoveries and lasting benefits for communities. Guided by the MOI and PMP, the joint effort is announced to the public and, if a funding opportunity, managed through proposal receipt, review, and award.
Explore partnership opportunities
NSF welcomes organizations that are ready to collaborate, innovate, and advance high-impact research, technology, and workforce development together. Partnership ideas may emerge from research, place-based, or partner communities that identify challenges best addressed through partnership or originate from NSF, based on its mission, national challenges and priorities, and active research programs.
Whether you want to ideate on an NSF focus area, develop a new track for an active program or create something new, there are multiple ways to engage with NSF.
Start a conversation
Have an idea or want to explore potential alignment? The NSF Strategic Partnerships Hub is dedicated to enabling, scaling, and sustaining partnerships across NSF. Contact NSF through the expression of interest form to begin a conversation about how your organization can work with NSF to develop impactful pilots and programs.
Explore all open NSF funding opportunities
Review current funding opportunities to learn about NSF's priorities and active projects. Partners can join existing funding opportunities as currently structured, as new tracks, or as supplements to NSF awardees.
Discover opportunities to partner
These opportunities showcase NSF programs and pilot efforts where partners can help accelerate progress and expand impact. Explore how your organization can partner with NSF to support the broader research and education community.
Interested in exploring these opportunities further?
Connect with the NSF Strategic Partnerships Hub to start a conversation to learn more.
NSF Translation to Practice supports use-inspired research and translation. Complementary expertise and resources, such as between universities and industry partners, can help bring a product, process or service to the market.
The NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates program allows selected undergraduate students to participate in research projects in any area of research funded by NSF.
Supports convergent research, education and networking activities to improve understanding, prediction and resilience to wildland fire and its interactions with communities, infrastructure, and the natural environment.
NSF AI-Ready America is a nationwide effort to boost artificial intelligence readiness in every U.S. state and territory. NSF AI-Ready America envisions a future where every individual, community, and business in the U.S. thrives in an AI-driven economy.
The NSF Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students program enables graduate students to gain core competencies and skills to support careers in any sector of the U.S. economy. Experiences support multiple career pathways across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Supports design and implementation of quantum science and technology demonstration projects as part of the NSF National Quantum Virtual Laboratory concept — an overarching shared infrastructure to develop and use quantum technologies.
Through collaborative research across computation, neuroscience, and cognitive science, NSF seeks to advance the understanding of neural and cognitive processes, machine learning, and AI.
Supports summer research experiences for K-14 educators that will enhance their scientific knowledge and subsequent ability to create classroom activities and curricula that broaden their students' awareness of and participation in computing and engineering pathways.
NSF X-Labs will support independent teams of entrepreneurs, technologists, researchers, scientists, and engineers who will pursue technical breakthroughs with the potential to reshape or create entire technology sectors.
Partnership resources
Partnerships Landscape Study
This study outlines NSF's existing partnership landscape, provides noteworthy examples and observations, and identifies the key steps NSF is taking to grow its future capacity for partnerships.
NSF Focus Areas
Learn more about NSF's priority investment areas on our Impacts page and explore the breadth of our focus areas.
