Update from the Assistant Director

Dear Colleagues,

This will be my last message as I am preparing to leave the U.S. National Science Foundation and return to my home institution (UC Berkeley) later this month. It is a bittersweet goodbye as it has been an incredible opportunity and privilege to oversee the NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences (NSF BIO) and help guide the funding of science at a national level for the last three years. Yet I am also eager to return to the broader community.

My three years at NSF have been professionally rewarding and challenging. The past year has been particularly challenging for both me and the directorate as we navigated many changes. Rest assured that NSF BIO has remained steadfast in its mission of enabling foundational research and training across the broad area of biological sciences.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all my colleagues in BIO. It's because of their dedication, resilience and passion that the directorate continues to fund exciting, state-of-the-art science. During my time at NSF, I was repeatedly struck by just how much work and effort goes into the review and management of the thousands of proposals we receive every year and the stewardship of the thousands of active awards we support. I also want to thank all of you, the broader community, for your help and support; it truly takes a village.

As I prepare for this transition, I have had the opportunity to reflect on all the exciting science we have enabled these last few years. At the heart of it are the core research awards supporting principal investigators nationwide, many receiving their very first NSF award. In addition, we started a broad array of large-scale centers, including synthesis centers, multidisciplinary centers focused on the prediction and prevention of pandemics, and biofoundries that are advancing biotechnology tools while expanding access to those tools. And, of course, we continued to support many established centers, as well as instrumentation and infrastructure facilities for use by the community.

In closing, I want to give a special thank-you to my colleague, Theresa Good, directorate head of BIO (formerly division director of the NSF Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences). I leave knowing that BIO is in good hands.

I am excited to return to the community and am leaving with the same conviction that brought me to the NSF — that so many of the world's current challenges have solutions rooted in biology. With you, I am committed to doing all I can to make sure the future is an exciting time for biology and cross-disciplinary discovery.

The relationships I developed or strengthened over the past three years have been incredibly meaningful to me. I look forward to crossing paths and continuing collaboration to realize our shared goals for science in the years to come.

Best,

Susan Marqusee, MD, Ph.D.
Assistant Director, Biological Sciences