Reflecting on NSF TIP in 2025 and looking ahead to 2026

Dear friends,

As you may have heard, to help keep America at the forefront of science and technology, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is making changes to increase our efficiency and effectiveness. First, NSF is implementing a reorganization that allows the agency to respond more swiftly to the scientific and research community and a rapidly evolving science and technology environment. Since the inception of our directorate, Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP), our staff have been organized into sections aligned with its strategic priorities; this NSF-wide reorganization has helped further align our structure with these priorities. Our focus on accelerating breakthrough technologies to market, growing a competition-ready workforce, and scaling the regions across the country that contribute to domestic R&D capacity remains the same.

Second, NSF is making changes to the merit review process to enhance time-to-award. Program officers will have greater discretion in the number of reviews proposals must receive before a funding decision can be made. With these changes, we aim to reduce the workload on program staff and the demands on the external reviewer community and increase NSF responsiveness while maintaining the rigor of merit review. As it happens, Congress charged TIP to rigorously experiment in the proposal and award process as part of its new initiatives — and we look forward to joining with the rest of the agency to further this important work.

Ultimately, NSF's aim is to encourage more innovative ideas, more novel and interdisciplinary proposals, and more researchers to come to the fore to seize emergent opportunities – all critically important for the nation's long-term competitiveness.

Now, as our team within the TIP closes out 2025, we want to take a moment to express our gratitude to our partners, awardees and the broader community for all that you have helped us accomplish this year. In particular, check out the Highlights just below our signature. Your willingness to engage with us and share your ideas, expertise, and contributions has been vital to ensure the U.S. remains a leader in technology, innovation and talent. We also want to acknowledge the TIP team for their hard work and dedication over this past year; we are immensely proud of their passion and innovation, and we thank them for their excellence and partnership in advancing the mission of the directorate and the agency.

We wish you opportunities to rest and recharge during the holiday season and a safe, healthy and happy new year. We look forward to building on our investments from this past year in 2026 – we have much work before us in the year ahead.

With gratitude,

Erwin Gianchandani and Gracie Narcho
Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships
U.S. National Science Foundation

Highlights

Over the past year, NSF TIP has bolstered U.S. leadership in science and technology, launched new initiatives that strengthen national security and economic competitiveness and made critical investments (see the newly launched TIP Investment Explorer) that position the country for a new Golden Age of American Innovation championed by the administration.

TIP invested in accelerating the development of critical and emerging technologies to ensure that the U.S. maintains its leadership in sectors tied to our economic and national security.

Together with federal and industry partners, we announced inaugural investment portfolios totaling $72 million to accelerate the adoption of cell-free systems for the next generation of advanced manufacturing, advancing next-generation wireless networks, reshoring U.S. leadership in 5G and beyond, and developing privacy-enhancing technologies, essential in health care, finance and beyond.

Last month, we announced the launch of STRIDE Ventures, an initiative that allows NSF to experiment with new models of innovation funding that connect researchers to national challenges and accelerate the path from discovery to deployment. The first funding opportunity from STRIDE Ventures is the Tech Metal Transformation Challenge, investing in the technology acceleration that's needed to more efficiently and effectively harvest critical minerals for nearly a quarter of the U.S. strategic metals supply chain needs by the year 2030.

TIP also just announced the NSF Tech Labs initiative, a bold new effort to launch and scale a new generation of independent research organizations. NSF Tech Labs will focus on technical challenges and bottlenecks that traditional university and industry labs cannot easily solve on their own. NSF anticipates making initial awards later in Fiscal Year 2026, with significant, multiphase awards for selected teams. To inform its program design, NSF is inviting feedback on this initiative through a Request for Information (RFI) by Jan. 20, 2026. We need your input to co-design the Tech Labs initiative for maximum impact.

TIP invested in building a competition-ready U.S. workforce that can secure American technological dominance in the years to come.

We are investing in training pathways and initiatives to prepare for the next generation of high-technology jobs. For example, TIP and Micron, along with colleagues in the NSF STEM Education Directorate, jointly invested $38 million in regional coalitions enabling experiential learning opportunities for American workers to develop skills in artificial intelligence, biotechnology and other administration priority areas — and find pathways into quality jobs. With this announcement, NSF investment in novel technology training and upskilling pathways through the Experiential Learning in Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT) program totals nearly $87 million over the last three years.

TIP also invested in NobleReach Foundation's Science to Venture platform, launching a pilot designed to accelerate the translation of emerging technologies for national security applications. This multiyear initiative will engage two NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) Hubs to identify and advance promising research to the market and develop the associated national security-focused talent pathways.

Finally, TIP released a first-ever Roadmap for Workforce Development, an actionable agenda to guide the next investments in strengthening the American workforce for careers in critical and emerging technologies. TIP invites input from the community on the road map by Jan. 15, 2026, as we seek to bolster career pathways for the innovation workforce in America.

TIP invested in expanding the geography of American innovation to increase the nation's domestic research, development and innovation capacity.

The NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) program announced 15 finalists for its second competition in September 2025. Finalists constitute coalitions of public and private partners who have come together, with each coalition harnessing its regional competitive advantage to make its ecosystem the nation and world's leader in a key technology. The NSF Engines finalists span energy grid security, critical minerals mining extraction, quantum computing and more, and are proposing to accelerate technologies to the market and grow their local workforce for local, good-quality, and high-wage jobs.

Meanwhile, the inaugural cohort of NSF Engines has generated over $1.5 billion in matching commitments from state and local governments, the private sector and other investors over the last two years, a 10-fold return on NSF's initial investment of taxpayer dollars. From the next generation of advanced semiconductors to the integration of AI and farming and agriculture, to regenerative medicine, the NSF Engines program is helping drive the technologies that will shape our future — it's already providing a return for the American people and ensuring America will lead in these critical and emerging technologies for years to come.