Comments to OSTP Regarding Accelerating the American Scientific Enterprise

Contents

Introduction. 1

Responses to RFI Questions 2

Conclusion. 18

Endnotes 18

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is happy to submit the following feedback in response to the administration’s Request for Information for Accelerating the American Scientific Enterprise. ITIF is an impartial, nonprofit, nonpartisan analysis and academic institute specializing in the intersection of technological innovation and public coverage.

The U.S. scientific enterprise has reached a fork in the highway. While earlier coverage has inspired principal investigators to pursue creativity and curiosity in conducting analysis, it’s clear that this strategy has not had the desired impact on advancing American competitiveness and strengthening America’s place in maximizing nationwide energy. The science group should transfer past the linear Science, the Endless Frontier-model of scientific analysis, developed and inspired by Vannevar Bush, and realign scientific exploration with nationwide pursuits, particularly in the face of the rising technological and financial menace posed by China.^[1]

Undertaking this shift will imply prioritizing high-impact fields equivalent to engineering, life sciences, and pc science over these with a less-direct affect on nationwide competitiveness, and it means extra carefully aligning the analysis and educational group with personal {industry}, prioritizing know-how switch and commercialization over fundamental, curiosity-driven analysis.

While we hope the administration will contemplate ITIF’s feedback and proposals on these points, we additionally would love to urge the administration to contemplate the bipartisan coverage blueprint already developed throughout the first Trump administration in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) “Return on Investment Initiative for Unleashing American Innovation” (the Green Paper). The Green Paper outlined a sequence of readily executable coverage concepts to enhance America’s know-how switch ecosystem, enhance the return on funding (ROI) from analysis {dollars}, streamline federal know-how rules, and enhance the aggressive orientation of the scientific enterprise. We imagine that the Green Paper presents a set of readily accessible and simply implementable coverage concepts to advance the American Scientific Enterprise. The administration ought to begin by reviewing and implementing the sturdy work it’s already accomplished on this regard.

(i) What coverage modifications to Federal funding mechanisms, procurement processes, or partnership authorities would allow stronger public-private collaboration and permit America to faucet into its huge personal sector to higher drive use-inspired fundamental and early-stage utilized analysis?

First and foremost, the United States should acknowledge that it has already constructed the world’s best system for know-how commercialization, particularly the place it pertains to mental property (IP)/applied sciences derived from federally funded analysis and growth (R&D) carried out at U.S. universities and analysis establishments. While optimistic reforms can nonetheless be made on the margins, the Trump administration should chorus from implementing poor IP/know-how commercialization insurance policies that unnecessarily make innovation tougher, dangerous, and costly.

In September 2025, in an Axios interview, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick known as for the federal authorities to declare half the patent earnings from college innovations derived partly from federal R&D, erroneously asserting that “the U.S. government is getting no return on the money it invests in federal research.”^[2] Yet the actuality is the U.S. taxpayer—and the authorities—advantages significantly from this R&D funding. They profit first from the intensive improvements produced from the educational tech switch course of, which alone has produced a whole bunch of life-saving medication and vaccines, together with remedies for breast, ovarian, prostate, and pores and skin most cancers, not to point out different breakthroughs in every little thing from Honeycrisp apples and neoprene to cloud and quantum computing. Second, college IP licensing revenues assist fund key innovation-enabling infrastructure at U.S. universities, equivalent to labs, incubators, or innovation accelerators that preserve the innovation flywheel churning. Third, the authorities advantages from the taxes produced by the trillions in industrial output and tens of millions of jobs created on account of college tech switch.^[3] For occasion, college analysis parks alone generated $33 billion in federal tax income in 2024.^[4] The administration ought to chorus from imposing a declare or a tax on IP licensing revenues earned by U.S. universities.

Similarly, the administration ought to chorus from proposals to cost patent holders between 1 and 5 p.c of a patent’s total worth. As ITIF has written, taxing patents would disincentivize innovation and hurt American competitiveness all whereas be terribly troublesome to implement.^[5] (It’s troublesome sufficient for the personal sector to precisely worth IP, not to mention a authorities company doing so, and particularly when debatable valuations could be tied up in litigation for years.) If the United States needs to develop increasingly more helpful IP—which is actually ought to as a matter of know-how and innovation coverage—then rising the price of that IP by way of an annual tax ought to be a proposal summarily dispatched. Indeed, the United States ought to proceed in the actual possibility course, equivalent to how the United States provides decrease patent submitting charges for small companies and the way it has labored by way of patent backlogs which as soon as took years to clear.^[6]

Do not apply Bayh-Dole march in rights to management the value of ensuing merchandise. As late as 1978, the federal authorities had licensed lower than 5 p.c of the as many as 30,000 patents it owned.^[7] Most of them languished on the cabinets of presidency workplaces or labs. Congress reworked the state of affairs by passing the bipartisan 1980 Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act, higher generally known as the “Bayh-Dole Act.” The laws each created a uniform patent coverage amongst the many federal businesses funding analysis and allowed universities to retain possession of the IP and innovations made on account of federally funded analysis.^[8] The Bayh-Dole Act has reworked U.S. universities into engines of innovation, spawning strong educational know-how switch and commercialization capabilities and actions at a whole bunch of universities throughout the United States.^[9]

In truth, the affect of educational know-how switch from U.S. universities has been so intensive that, from 1996 to 2020, it resulted in 554,000 innovations disclosed, 141,000 U.S. patents granted, and 18,000 start-ups fashioned.^[10] Moreover, educational know-how switch has bolstered U.S. gross home product (GDP) by up to $1 trillion, contributed to $1.9 trillion in gross U.S. industrial output, and supported 6.5 million jobs over that point.^[11]

When Congress handed the Bayh-Dole Act it included so-called “march-in right” provisions, which enable the authorities, in specified circumstances, to require patent holders to grant a “nonexclusive, partially exclusive, or exclusive license” to a “responsible applicant or applicants.”^[12] Yet some have known as for the authorities to use Bayh-Dole march-in rights to management the value of ensuing merchandise, equivalent to pharmaceutical medication. This regardless of the undeniable fact that decrease costs will not be considered one of the rationales specified by the Bayh-Dole Act. In truth, as senators Bayh and Dole have themselves famous, the Bayh-Dole Act’s march-in rights have been by no means supposed to management or guarantee “reasonable prices.”^[13]

The Trump administration ought to return to an initiative undertaken in its first iteration, when it had directed NIST to undertake a evaluation of federal insurance policies that might bolster the return of federal investments in R&D. The remaining 2018 report NIST produced, the “Return on Investment Initiative: Draft Green Paper,” concluded, “The use of march-in is typically regarded as a last resort, and has never been exercised since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980.”^[14] The report additional famous, “NIH determined that that use of march-in to control drug prices was not within the scope and intent of the authority.”^[15] The Trump administration ought to construct upon the findings of the 2018 NIST Green Paper and affirmatively declare that value isn’t a legit foundation for the train of Bayh-Dole march-in rights.

Do not give away American IP. The administration also needs to chorus from gifting away personal American IP to international or home entities. In the waning days of the Biden administration, the Nuclear Research Program at the Department of Energy misguidedly opened up U.S. clear vitality know-how to the world. The Nuclear Research Program truly mandated that any interventions supported by its funding be given away—even to international rivals.^[16] The memo, which was not initially made public outdoors of the Department of Energy (DOE) National Laboratories, said:

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) is issuing this steering concerning the commercialization of NE-funded applied sciences. With this steering, NE is establishing a coverage desire for the dedication to the public of such know-how, the place it’s made freely accessible to the public with few or no mental property restrictions, or the non-exclusive licensing of know-how developed with NE funding. (Emphasis added.)

Recognizing that the contractors who handle National Laboratories for DOE in accordance to Management & Operating (M&O) contracts (DOE National Laboratory contractors) usually have rights beneath the Bayh-Dole Act, together with the proper to elect title to federally-funded innovations and license these innovations per the know-how switch mission clauses of M&O contracts this coverage is meant to be a major issue that the National Laboratory M&O contractors are anticipated to weigh when structuring and negotiating the licensing of NE-funded applied sciences, even when owned by the contractor. In the extraordinary circumstances by which a National Laboratory desires to completely license a NE funded know-how, NE expects the National Laboratory M&O contractor to seek the advice of with NE management and the DOE Patent Counsel prior to getting into into such an unique license. The goal of this session is to confirm that each one events agree that the unique license is the finest car for advancing DOE’s mission and pursuits, together with maximizing commercialization and broadly disseminating NE-funded know-how.[17]

Giving away U.S. nuclear know-how is a poor technique when China has already begun to surpass the United States in the analysis into and deployment of fourth-generation nuclear reactor applied sciences and to no less than be shut to, if not at par, with the United States in nuclear fusion.^[18] The DOE ought to comply with established know-how licensing practices as codified in the Bayh-Dole Act.

(ii) How can the Federal authorities higher assist the translation of scientific discoveries from academia, nationwide labs, and different analysis establishments into sensible purposes? Specifically, what modifications to tech switch insurance policies, translational applications, or business incentives would speed up the path from labs to market?

Empower the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) TIP Directorate. One of the best methods by which the U.S. authorities can catalyze know-how switch and commercialization could be by empowering a program it has already established. The National Science Foundation (NSF) created the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnership (TIP) with the mission of accelerating key know-how switch to advance U.S. competitiveness. Congress approved the directorate with $20 billion by way of the CHIPS and Science Act by way of 2027.^[19] TIP makes {industry} buy-in a prerequisite for all tasks receiving funding. Under Subtitle G of the CHIPS and Science Act, TIP grants should “develop mutually beneficial research and technology development partnerships and collaborations among entities such as institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations, labor organizations, for-profit entities, government entities, and international entities,” a tenet meant to assure an accelerated path to sensible commercialization and use, and a stark distinction from a lot of NSF’s different analysis.^[20] Additionally, Subtitle G states that TIP grants are to be awarded just for analysis in a number of key know-how focus areas, together with AI, quantum computing, biopharmaceuticals, and semiconductors.^[21]

However, in the years since the CHIPS Act was handed, Congress has solely appropriated $410 million to the program.^[22] Unsurprisingly, a program with an supposed finances of $20 billion can’t construct U.S. competitiveness in essential applied sciences with simply 10 p.c of that finances. Yet, it has nonetheless made important strides in accelerating know-how translation. Rather than funding the ten applied sciences it initially selected, TIP has launched funding alternatives for 3 applied sciences seen as having the biggest potential for progress in competitiveness with the smallest funding: AI use for protein and enzyme design, advancing cell-free methods in biochemical processes, and bettering fifth-generation networks and creating next-generation wi-fi networks.

Given the success TIP has displayed in funding essential know-how analysis and attracting personal companions to analysis tasks, Congress ought to prolong the interval over which the CHIPS Act authorizes TIP funding past 2027 to be sure that all $20 billion approved is appropriated and applicable $1 billion to the directorate for fiscal yr 2026. Even with a further $1 billion in appropriated funds from the CHIPS and Science Act, TIP wouldn’t have the option to pursue funding alternatives throughout all 10 key applied sciences that Congress recognized as essential to U.S. competitiveness. It would, at most, fund alternatives in a handful of applied sciences. An further $1 billion ought to be added every fiscal yr till annual appropriations for TIP attain or exceed $4 billion per yr.

TIP can be working with a forty five p.c smaller workforce as of January 2025 on account of departures from attrition, deferred resignation applications, early retirement provides, and different cuts made in compliance with directives from the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, compounded by the ongoing federal hiring freeze.^[23] A smaller workforce, coupled with the hiring freeze, has made it unattainable to broaden TIP’s community of applications into essential know-how areas. Congress should make it a precedence to fund TIP totally and elevate the hiring freeze for TIP.

Increase the significance of commercialization actions at federal labs and analysis institutes. America’s federal laboratories are insufficiently incentivized to make investments time, vitality, and assets in facilitating know-how switch, largely as a result of know-how switch isn’t even considered one of the eight foremost standards in the Performance Evaluation and Management Plan (PEMP), a form of annual report card for the federal labs.^[24] Rather, PEMP treats profitable transfers of know-how to market as an afterthought. Elevating this vital perform to its personal class would have important impacts on the administration of the labs and assist to reverse the buildup of many years of skepticism and intransigence towards commercialization. Adding a ninth class to the PEMP for “Technology Impact” would create a mechanism to consider the financial affect of lab-developed know-how, making a stronger incentive for lab managers to give attention to market implementation of useful authorities IP belongings and technical capabilities.^[25]

Consider federal mannequin IP agreements. Several states have applied mannequin mental property agreements, enabling quicker, simpler collaboration between universities and the personal sector and streamlining the know-how switch course of. Virginia, considered one of these states, introduced its Lab-to-Launch initiative in August of this yr, which can assist college researchers and entrepreneurs in two key methods. First, the settlement standardizes the language in college IP agreements with start-ups, lowering the limitations and prices for entrepreneurs wanting to commercialize their improvements. Start-ups that spin off from universities utilizing these licenses are additionally eligible for awards of up to $50,000 towards their commercialization prices.^[26]

Second, the invoice creates an Entrepreneur-in-Residence program that connects college researchers with the personal sector. This program will develop a web-based database of college IP, making it simpler for personal {industry} to discover and interact with college researchers, lowering the price and time required for collaboration.^[27] The federal settlement ought to study these mannequin IP licensing agreements and consider in the event that they might be useful towards bettering IP licensing practices, equivalent to for IP popping out of nationwide laboratories.

Expand DOE’s Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP). LEEP is designed to assist early-stage progressive vitality entrepreneurs take their product concepts to market with the collaboration of laboratory employees. LEEP applications have been developed at a number of nationwide laboratories, together with the Cyclotron Road program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The LEEP program has enabled scientific entrepreneurs to develop essential energy-specific applied sciences that may have been cost-prohibitive with out funding from nationwide laboratories. One examine discovered that LEEP achieved a 92 p.c success price, with almost 4,000 jobs created, 182 new companies began, and 212 fellows supported.^[28]

Other authorities businesses ought to undertake the LEEP program, increasing this chance past merely clear vitality applied sciences. The Department of War might undertake LEEP applications to assist entrepreneurial scientists in protection and safety applied sciences, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH) might develop an analogous program for people with progressive concepts in life sciences or biotechnology.

Empower the NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERC) program. NSF’s Engineering Research Center program (ERC) helps a community of 17 strategic university-industry partnerships that pursue high-risk, high-payoff analysis throughout nearly the complete spectrum of know-how fields—together with superior manufacturing, biotechnology, clear vitality and sustainability, microelectronics, and data know-how.^[29] Since 1985, NSF has funded 83 ERCs which have led to greater than 1,400 invention licenses, 920 patents, and 250 spinoff firms.^[30] However, these partnerships don’t require any {industry} funding match, lowering the chance that engineers skilled on this program shall be ready with industry-specific abilities or that analysis in these facilities shall be commercialized by personal {industry}. Additionally, amongst the 17 ERCs at present funded by NSF, a number of will not be targeted on applied sciences utilized in globally traded industries, once more lowering the applicability of the abilities realized and the analysis carried out in these facilities to the personal sector.^[31]

The administration ought to work to reform and broaden this program. Given the aim of the ERC program to have interaction {industry}, it ought to be housed inside the TIP directorate at NSF. Moving this program will even be sure that the ERC facilities are aligned with the aforementioned 10 strategic key know-how areas targeted on by TIP.^[32] Additionally, the framework for awarding funding beneath ERC ought to be adjusted. NSF ought to require that ERCs have no less than half of their federal funding matched by {industry}. TIP also needs to be sure that current and new ERCs extra successfully coordinate with different comparable federally funded applications. For instance, NSF’s ERC for Cell Manufacturing Technologies ought to coordinate with the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing and Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), as each conduct analysis on cell manufacturing, however with a lower-level TRL focus for the ERC and a higher-level focus for NIIMBL. Beyond these reforms, the administration ought to work with Congress to guarantee no less than $150 million in annual funding for the NSF ERC program, supporting each current and new manufacturing-focused ERCs.

Expand the Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) program. The Industry University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) program forges partnerships between universities and {industry}, that includes industrially related elementary analysis, industrial assist of and collaboration in analysis and schooling, and direct switch of university-developed concepts, analysis outcomes, and know-how to U.S. {industry} to enhance its aggressive posture in international markets.^[33] NSF at present operates IUCRCs in 10 totally different essential applied sciences, together with superior manufacturing, biotechnology, and data, communication, and computing.^[34] As with the ERC program, the United States might get extra out of the IUCRC program to assist each the American scientific enterprise and U.S. industrial competitiveness. The IUCRC program also needs to be moved beneath the TIP directorate in NSF to be sure that IUCRC focus areas align with these designated by Congress as essential to U.S. competitiveness. Additionally, the Trump administration ought to work with Congress to present annual funding for the IUCRC program that helps no less than 15 extra facilities in essential commercial-ready applied sciences.

(iii) What insurance policies would encourage the formation and scaling of regional innovation ecosystems that join native companies, universities, academic establishments, and the native workforce—significantly in areas the place the Federal authorities has current analysis belongings like nationwide laboratories or federally-funded analysis facilities?

Expand the collaborative R&D Tax Credit. Growing sectors of the economic system more and more depend on collaborative analysis (e.g. analysis carried out between a enterprise and a college, federal lab, or consortium). Businesses are more and more turning to universities, federal labs, and different exterior sources for analysis, permitting for the creation of top-ranked progressive business merchandise. In response, U.S. allies and rivals are more and more providing further tax incentives to spur collaborative R&D. For instance, Hungary provides a full expensing of all R&D prices carried out beneath collaboration with a college or analysis establishment up to 500 million forints.^[35] Japan provides a flat tax credit score for collaborating with a college or analysis establishment of up to 30 p.c.^[36]

Yet, the R&D tax credit score—the principal approach the authorities entices the personal sector to make investments extra in R&D—falls wanting successfully incentivizing analysis collaborations. To make the United States extra aggressive, Congress ought to create a collaborative R&D tax credit score, eligible for all sectors. The United States at present gives a 20 p.c credit score for collaborative R&D, however it solely applies to vitality analysis. The administration ought to work with Congress to remove the vitality restriction. Further, firms ought to have the option to declare the R&D tax credit score on one hundred pc of the investments they make in R&D at U.S. universities; at present they’re solely ready to make a declare of up to 70 p.c of their funding.

Reform Technology Hub Programs. In a 2019 report, “The Case for Growth Centers,” ITIF examined the place innovation jobs are present in the U.S. economic system, defining these as jobs in industries which have a specified stage of R&D depth and that make use of a sure share of STEM staff. ITIF discovered that totally one-third of U.S. innovation jobs are concentrated in simply 14 U.S. counties, and one-half in 40 counties.^[37] This perception was a part of the inspiration behind Congressional creation of the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Regional Tech Hubs program. EDA has designated 31 Tech Hubs and, in July 2024, launched $504 million in Implementation awards for 12 of the 31 designated Tech Hubs.^[38] The remaining 19 hubs ought to be totally funded.

Besides Congress not appropriating sufficient cash, the program was poorly applied. The Biden administration allowed NSF and the Department of Commerce (together with the Department of War and the Small Business Administration) to develop their very own regional hub applications with no coordination, basically spreading restricted assets far too huge and skinny. Moreover, a lot of the EDA awards are weak and sure to by no means change into self-sufficient hubs as soon as federal funding ends. Accordingly, the Trump administration ought to redo the competitors, however this time fund fewer facilities, make NSF and EDA develop a joint program, require {industry} funding, and be sure that winners might be self-sufficient.

(iv) How can federal insurance policies strengthen the position performed by small and medium-sized companies as each drivers of innovation and as early adopters of rising tech?

The Trump administration ought to work with Congress to get the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) applications reauthorized. The applications (enacted in 1982 and 1992, respectively) have grown to change into the federal authorities’s most impactful applications and largest sources of early-stage capital for know-how commercialization, permitting U.S.-owned and operated small companies to have interaction in R&D exercise that has a powerful potential for commercialization.^[39] SBIR units apart 3.25 p.c of R&D funding from 11 federal businesses (all these with R&D budgets higher than $100 million yearly), offering about $2.5 billion yearly to assist small companies participating in R&D with commercialization potential.

SBIR accounts for under 3 p.c of federal extramural analysis funding, but quite a few research have documented the program’s great contributions to the U.S. innovation economic system. Since the program’s inception, it has distributed over $40 billion in funding, which has contributed to the technology of over 70,000 patents and 700 public firms.^[40] On common, SBIR-supported firms obtain 10 patents every day—a testomony to the progressive prowess of the greater than 450,000 engineers and scientists working in firms which have been SBIR-supported.^[41] Companies launched partly with SBIR assist characteristic a “who’s who” of a few of America’s most profitable innovators, together with 23andMe, Amgen, Apple, Biogen, Jarvik Heart, LIFT Labs, Millennium Pharma, Qualcomm, Symantec, iRobot, and numerous others.^[42]

Congressional policymakers failed to reauthorize the program earlier than its expiration on September 30, 2025, leaving the way forward for large-scale small enterprise and startup success in jeopardy. Congress ought to reauthorize the applications in new laws whereas addressing some apparent points, equivalent to so-called SBIR mills, or firms which have change into depending on SBIR awards as a major enterprise mannequin. For occasion, Congress might cap the variety of proposals any single small enterprise could submit in response to any single Phase I or Phase II solicitation to not more than three proposals throughout the agency or restrict companies to not more than 25 proposals per yr throughout all SBIR and STTR solicitations.^[43] Congress might additionally cap the whole award quantity {that a} agency could obtain from SBIR grants to $75 million.

Expand the use of innovation vouchers. The administration ought to contemplate working with Congress to broaden the availability of innovation vouchers for small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Innovation vouchers are grants that allow SMEs to buy providers from universities, analysis establishments, or federal labs to stimulate innovation. These providers could embrace help with conducting R&D, know-how feasibility assessments, overcoming particular product growth hurdles, product prototyping, lab validation, or different actions which might be troublesome for smaller companies to undertake. Many innovation voucher applications have been adopted at the state stage in the United States, together with in Connecticut, New York, and New Mexico, in addition to internationally in lots of European nations and Canada. In the United States, vouchers vary from $25,000 to $50,000, whereas in Europe they vary from €10,000 to €25,000.^[44]

Innovation vouchers foster higher ranges of the industry-academic collaboration needed for data switch, whereas introducing SMEs to steady R&D and innovation practices. As companies change into extra snug conducting R&D, the time required for product commercialization is diminished, inducing higher financial advantages.^[45]

For the previous a number of years, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have supplied technical help to the recipients of Department of Energy (DOE) -funded voucher applications, specifically American-Made Challenges (AMC), the Incubator Program, and the Small Business Vouchers Program. This effort ought to be totally constructed out right into a nationwide program throughout the clear vitality targeted federal labs to drive sturdy relationships between entrepreneurs and the nationwide labs to speed up the roll-out of latest applied sciences in U.S. clear vitality sectors equivalent to electrical car (EV) batteries and photo voltaic cells.^[46]

Expand the availability of Manufacturing Reinvestment Account. In Connecticut, small producers obtain a producing reinvestment account, comparable to a 401(okay), the place they could make investments up to $100,000 of earnings yearly over 5 years. These accounts are one hundred pc tax-exempt and should solely be used for R&D-related bills. Implementing these accounts on the federal stage would permit small producers to extra simply afford R&D actions, with minimal price to the authorities.^[47]

(v) What empirically grounded findings from metascience analysis and progress research might inform the federal grantmaking course of to maximize ROI? Please present particular examples of evidence-based reforms that might enhance funding allocation, peer evaluation, or grant analysis.

A rising physique of metascience research can inform two key factors of the federal grantmaking system: what and how it funds.

1. What the federal authorities funds:

(a) Longer, versatile, investigator-focused grants enhance breakthrough output

Empirical proof:

Azoulay et al. (2011) examine Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator awards—long-term, versatile grants that tolerate early failure—to NIH R01 awards, that are shorter, milestone-driven, and extra threat averse. The examine finds that HHMI investigators produce high-impact articles at considerably larger charges than comparable NIH-funded scientists.^[48]

Potential reform:

Dedicate an outlined share of NIH/NSF extramural budgets (e.g., 10-20 p.c) to investigator-focused awards that provide longer phrases, versatile budgets, and broader mission statements quite than slim particular goals. This operationalizes the precept of funding folks, not simply tasks, which empirical proof suggests yields extra transformative science.

2. How the federal authorities decides what to fund: Improving peer evaluation

(a) Funding extra extremely novel tasks

Empirical proof:

A metascience evaluation of current research discovered that normal peer evaluation is biased in opposition to extremely novel or interdisciplinary proposals, that are routinely penalized by reviewers, as reviewers low cost concepts which might be too unfamiliar or interdisciplinary (See: Tartari and Kolympiris, 2021; Ayoubi et al., 2021; Boudreau et al., 2016; Lane et al., 2021).^[49]

Potential reform:

Create devoted high-novelty tracks at NIH/NSF with panels explicitly instructed to reward novelty and be extra tolerant of failure, analysis frameworks that anticipate a mixture of failures and successes, and a dedicated finances share for high-risk, high-reward proposals.

(b) Partial randomization to enhance equity when reviewer scores converge

Empirical proof:

Research exhibits that in the mid-range, the place many proposals are basically indistinguishable in high quality, reviewers are confronted with the troublesome process of choosing amongst these, which will increase the threat of arbitrary selections not primarily based on scientific standards that opens the door to biases. Partial randomization (lotteries) on this zone of proposals, complementing peer evaluation, might present an unbiased measure of equity with out harming scientific high quality.^[50]

Potential reform:

Implement tiered evaluation in giant NIH/NSF applications:

▪ Tier 1: Clearly excellent, prime rated, proposals—fund usually.

▪ Tier 2: All proposals above a high quality threshold however not clearly rankable—enter right into a lottery.

▪ Tier 3: Clearly noncompetitive—don’t fund.

Start with pilots (e.g., small applications) and rigorously consider outcomes relative to conventional peer-reviewed applications.

(vi) What reforms will allow the American scientific enterprise to pursue extra high-risk, high-reward analysis that might remodel our scientific understanding and unlock new tech, whereas sustaining the incremental science important for cumulative manufacturing of data?

Create megafunds for top threat R&D. In 1960, private-sector R&D was cut up one-third to analysis and two-thirds to growth. Today, solely one-fifth of agency R&D goes to analysis. One purpose firms are shifting away from fundamental and utilized analysis is due to the threat concerned in financing. In drug growth, for instance, it usually takes years or many years and a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars} to produce a worthwhile product. Individual firms and even enterprise capitalists usually lack the urge for food for such long-term, high-risk, high-reward investments.

This threat might be mitigated by way of giant portfolios that mixture and handle threat. Mutual funds, pension funds, and 401(okay) retirement accounts work this manner, and MIT economist Andrew Lo has proposed extending this concept by establishing “megafunds” that make the most of monetary engineering methods to fund R&D in long-term, high-risk, high-payoff areas equivalent to drug discovery for most cancers or orphan ailments.^[51] However, to date, no such megafunds have been created by the market. The authorities incentives required for the creation of those funds might embrace a number of approaches from 4 broad classes: analysis and funding information streams; clear guidelines for personal basis program-related megafund investments; federal credit score assist; and tax incentives for funds investing in applied sciences with excessive societal affect (for instance by way of the institution of schedules and values of foundation level step-ups and penalties).

To promote the creation of R&D megafunds, the Trump administration ought to set up an workplace inside the Department of Commerce to develop and implement the wanted incentives and oversight. The workplace could be tasked with establishing the guidelines for the funds and coordinating with federal businesses and the personal sector to establish the technical areas of nationwide curiosity the place private-sector engagement is required and the incentives required. The workplace ought to work with researchers, {industry}, and regulators to develop data-reporting and transparency requirements that promote the translation of analysis to the market, present a greater understanding of the societal advantages of analysis, and an environment friendly information stream for regulation, and coordinate with federal funding businesses to implement the provision and assortment of such information.^[52]

Continue to assist the current HRHR applications throughout authorities. Several authorities businesses have applications designed to fund HRHR analysis, which frequently have excessive prices however can yield excessive ROI. The NIH Common Fund contains an HRHR portfolio designed to make investments solely in these dearer investments, and the a number of ARPA workplaces in the DOE, Department of War, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Transportation have an analogous goal. The administration ought to chorus from slicing these applications as a short-term cost-saving measure and as an alternative give attention to the long-term returns they supply. The Trump administration ought to proceed to empower these businesses to fund HRHR analysis.

(vii) How can the federal authorities assist novel institutional fashions for analysis that complement conventional college constructions and allow tasks that require huge assets, interdisciplinary coordination, or an prolonged timeline?

The Financial Accountability in Research Model (FAIR). Under the present federal analysis funding mechanism for analysis establishments, establishments are paid for his or her analysis prices beneath two totally different classes: direct analysis prices, which embrace the price of undertaking supplies, researchers, and funds to analysis members, and oblique analysis prices, together with the prices of utilities, leases, operations, and different facility bills supporting analysis actions. Indirect prices are paid to the establishment at a negotiated reimbursement price that has not been adjusted in recent times and due to this fact doesn’t account for the enhance in regulatory and administrative prices for researchers. Thus, researchers are sometimes reimbursed far under the true worth of oblique analysis prices, putting an additional monetary burden on analysis establishments.^[53]

The Financial Accountability in Research (FAIR) Model improves on the present system by requiring all analysis establishments to classify all prices for every undertaking they undertake as analysis efficiency prices (previously direct prices) and important analysis efficiency assist and normal analysis operations (previously oblique prices). These modifications enhance the transparency for the authorities by outlining precisely what providers are being funded, and ensures that analysis establishments are funded for his or her full analysis prices, quite than only a small fraction. The administration ought to work with Congress to implement the FAIR Model for all businesses that award grant funding.^[54]

Focused Research Organizations (FROs). Traditional educational constructions excel at investigator-driven discovery however battle with tasks that require large-scale coordination, prolonged timelines, or shared analysis infrastructure. Novel institutional fashions might fill this hole. The federal authorities can assist Focused Research Organizations (FROs)—non-profit entities designed to deal with giant, advanced analysis challenges and produce public items (instruments, datasets, platforms) and fall outdoors the scope of a single educational lab, firm, or casual consortium.^[55]

Historical examples embrace the Large Hadron Collider and the Human Genome Project—efforts too giant and too unsure for particular person labs or early-stage firms, not instantly profitable sufficient for {industry} to undertake, but important for scientific progress.^[56]

In biopharma, FROs might deal with pre-competitive challenges too massive for one firm. One present instance, supported by Convergent Research, an incubator for FROs, goals to map the pharmome—figuring out all unintended targets of accredited small-molecule medication.^[57] The public advantages embrace higher security pharmacology profiling, new drug repurposing alternatives, and higher coaching information for AI drug growth fashions.

NSF’s initiative, Tech Labs, introduced December 12, 2025 to launch and scale a brand new technology of transformative impartial analysis organizations to advance breakthrough science is a vital step on this course.^[58] Most federal science funding takes the type of small, project-based grants to particular person scientists at universities, however a extra diversified funding portfolio, with initiatives equivalent to Tech Labs (with $10-50 million/yr awards per group, 5+ yr commitments, and measuring affect by way of development up the Tech Readiness Level scale quite than papers revealed) is vital as analysis at this time is more and more team-based, interdisciplinary, and infrastructure-intensive, needing institutional assist, and can’t be accomplished solely by way of the conventional funding mannequin of a sequence of grant tasks.

(viii) How can the Federal authorities leverage and put together for advances in AI methods which will remodel scientific analysis—together with automated speculation technology, experimental design, literature synthesis, and autonomous experimentation? What infrastructure investments, organizational fashions, and workforce growth methods are wanted to understand these capabilities whereas sustaining scientific rigor and analysis integrity?

One of the best methods the federal authorities can put together for AI-driven advances in scientific analysis is by making certain that rising automation capabilities are translated into broadly usable analysis infrastructure. A key precedence ought to be supporting the adoption of self-driving labs (SDLs), which use AI and robotics to autonomously design, execute, and interpret experiments. SDLs straight enhance scientific productiveness by changing sluggish, guide trial-and-error workflows with automated experimental loops. This is particularly vital in supplies science, the place progress stays rate-limited by the want to fabricate and take a look at giant numbers of bodily samples as a result of materials conduct can’t be reliably predicted prematurely. By automating experimentation and repeatedly feeding outcomes again into fashions, SDLs permit researchers to discover bigger design areas extra shortly whereas producing standardized, reproducible information.

While promising SDL methods exist already, making certain their broad adoption as routine analysis infrastructure would require sustained public assist. Materials science, particularly, has seen slower diffusion than associated fields equivalent to chemistry, the place automated synthesis and high-throughput experimentation are extra established. This displays the lengthy timelines from discovery to deployment in supplies, which cut back personal incentives to spend money on capital-intensive automation regardless of giant long-term returns. Targeted public funding can guarantee these capabilities scale.

Policymakers ought to guarantee broad adoption by pursuing public funding fashions that de-risk early deployment and make self-driving labs accessible past a small variety of well-resourced establishments. One strategy is an ARPA-E–fashion Grand Challenge that competitively funds groups to construct and reveal SDLs able to delivering measurable advances in supplies discovery. This would speed up technical progress whereas establishing proof factors for SDLs as sturdy nationwide infrastructure. In parallel, policymakers ought to assist Focused Research Organizations to develop modular, open-source {hardware} and software program parts that decrease prices, allow interoperability, and make SDLs simpler to replicate and adapt throughout labs. Together, these fashions would transfer SDLs from remoted demonstrations into broadly usable analysis infrastructure.

(ix) What particular federal statutes, rules, or insurance policies create pointless limitations to scientific analysis or the deployment of analysis outcomes? Please describe the barrier, its affect on scientific progress, and potential treatments that may protect legit coverage goals whereas enabling innovation?

Develop a Phase Zero grant award program inside main federal analysis businesses. When the SBIR and STTR applications have been nonetheless energetic, they each supported innovation, however required excessive approval requirements for early-stage firms. There was usually inadequate funding accessible at universities (or from different sources) to advance nascent applied sciences to the level at which these firms have been positioned to obtain an SBIR or STTR grant. The drawback was that researchers and universities lacked the assets to assist the proof-of-concept work, market evaluation, and mentoring wanted to translate concepts and nascent applied sciences from the college laboratory right into a business product.

A nationwide “Phase Zero” proof-of-concept program wouldn’t solely assist extra tasks cross the “valley of death,” however would additionally assist improve the infrastructure (e.g., experience, personnel, assist, small enterprise, and enterprise capital engagement) and facilitate the cultural change needed for universities, federal laboratories, and different non-profit analysis organizations to assist commercialization actions.

America’s rivals have acknowledged the want for such an instrument. For occasion, the European Research Council (ERC) has introduced a brand new proof-of-concept funding initiative to assist bridge the hole between ERC-funded analysis and the earliest stage of marketable improvements.^[59] These awards could be as excessive as $215,000 for particular person researchers, in whole, equal to about 1 p.c of ERC’s finances.^[60] Here in the United States, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation has established Translational Research (for particular person researchers) and Translational Partnership (for establishments) Awards for proof-of-concept analysis in biomedical engineering.^[61] The Translational Research Awards are made in quantities of roughly $100,000 per yr, whereas the college grants have a period of 5 years at over $500,000 per yr.

Similarly, NIH’s Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REACH) program fosters the growth of therapeutics, preventatives, diagnostics, gadgets, and instruments that handle ailments inside NIH’s mission in a way in keeping with enterprise case growth. The work supported by the REACH program could embrace technical validation, market analysis, clarification of IP place and technique, and investigation of economic or enterprise alternatives.^[62] Finally, plenty of states, equivalent to Kentucky and Louisiana, have developed Phase Zero grants to assist companies apply for SBIR grants and assist early proof-of-concept analysis. One approach for the federal authorities to implement such a proof-of-concept program could be by way of a grant program for states that agree to match the funds dollar-for-dollar.

(x) How can Federal applications higher establish and develop scientific expertise throughout the nation, significantly leveraging digital instruments and distributed analysis fashions to have interaction researchers outdoors conventional educational facilities?

If the United States is to considerably revitalize America’s scientific enterprise, it wants to take additional steps to guarantee it has the workforce to assist expanded U.S. scientific and technical output. That’s particularly the case as analysts anticipate the demand for tech expertise to develop to 7.1 million tech jobs by 2034 in the United States, from an estimated six million in 2023.^[63] Another report by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) finds that, by the finish of 2030, an estimated 3.85 million further jobs requiring proficiency in technical fields shall be created in the United States, however that, “Of those, 1.4 million jobs risk going unfilled unless we can expand the pipeline for such workers in fields such as skilled technicians, engineering, and computer science.”^[64] For the semiconductor {industry}, the report estimates that roughly 67,000—or 58 p.c of projected new jobs (and 80 p.c of projected new technical jobs)—threat going unfilled at present diploma completion charges.^[65] The administration ought to lead in a number of efforts to improve U.S. workforce skilling, together with:

Expand Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program funding. Skilled technicians are a key element of the traded sector workforce. One extremely profitable program designed to construct technician abilities is NSF’s Advanced Technological Education program, which helps group faculties working in partnership with {industry}, financial growth businesses, workforce funding boards, and secondary and different larger schooling establishments.^[66] ATE tasks and facilities are educating technicians in a variety of fields, together with nanotechnologies and microtechnologies, fast prototyping, biomanufacturing, logistics, and various gasoline cars. Notwithstanding this, ATE funding is sort of small, at roughly $74 million in FY 2025.^[67] The Trump administration ought to work with Congress to double ATE funding to no less than $150 million per yr.

Expand the Manufacturing Engineering Education Program (MEEP). The engineering curricula at too many American universities is overly educational as opposed to {industry} targeted. Indeed, college engineering applications have developed in two troubling instructions over the previous a number of many years. First, the give attention to “engineering as a science” has more and more moved college engineering schooling away from a give attention to actual drawback fixing towards extra summary engineering science. Second, this give attention to “engineering as a science” has left college engineering departments extra involved with producing pure data than working with {industry} to assist them clear up actual issues.

That’s why ITIF has argued that the United States wants extra “manufacturing universities,” which might revamp their engineering applications and focus rather more on manufacturing engineering and particularly work that’s extra related to {industry}. This would come with extra joint industry-university analysis tasks, extra pupil coaching that comes with manufacturing experiences by way of co-ops or different applications, and a Ph.D. schooling program targeted on turning out extra engineering graduates who work in {industry}. These universities would view Ph.D.s as akin to high-level apprenticeships (as they usually are in Germany), the place {industry} expertise is required as a part of the diploma. Likewise, standards for college tenure would contemplate professors’ work with and/or in {industry} as a lot as their variety of scholarly publications. In addition, these universities’ enterprise faculties would combine carefully with engineering and give attention to manufacturing points, together with administration of manufacturing.

One mannequin for these manufacturing universities is the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, which reimagined engineering schooling and curriculum to put together college students “to become exemplary engineering innovators who recognize needs, design solutions, and engage in creative enterprises for the good of the world.”^[68]

Congress applied a type of these proposals when it handed the Manufacturing Engineering Education Program into regulation in December 2016 as a part of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), authorizing the Department of Defense to assist industry-relevant, manufacturing-focused, engineering coaching at U.S. establishments of upper schooling, universities, {industry}, and not-for-profit establishments. With its $48 million in preliminary funding, MEEP made awards to 13 academic and {industry} companions to convey academic alternatives to Americans fascinated with studying manufacturing abilities essential to sustaining the U.S. protection innovation base.^[69] In 2023, MEEP issued further three-year funding grants “that establish programs or enhance existing programs to better position the manufacturing workforce to produce military systems and components that assure technological superiority for DoD.”^[70]

MEEP is usually a highly effective initiative, however it’s underfunded and has change into too solely targeted on engineering in the nationwide protection context. Therefore, the Administration ought to work with Congress to broaden the MEEP remit to refocus it extra on supporting industry-relevant, utilized engineering applications at main universities. Congress ought to allocate $150 million yearly to a revitalized MEEP program that may make grants to 20 engineering applications at main U.S. universities to redirect them towards extra hands-on, industrially related engineering actions.

(xi) How can the fed authorities foster nearer collaboration amongst scientists, engineers, and expert technical staff, and higher combine coaching pathways, recognizing that breakthrough analysis usually requires deep collaboration between theoretical and utilized experience?

Establish an Office of Innovation Review. Because federal businesses usually suggest rules with little consideration given to their impact on innovation, Congress ought to process the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs with creating an Office of Innovation Review (OIR) to evaluation proposed rules to decide their impact not simply on prices in the brief time period but in addition on innovation over the long run. OIR would have the particular mission of being the “innovation champion” inside company rule-making processes.^[71] It would have authority to push businesses to both affirmatively promote innovation or to obtain a specific regulatory goal in a way least damaging to innovation. OIR could be approved to suggest new company actions and to reply to current ones and will incorporate a “competitiveness screen” in its evaluation of federal rules that have an effect on globally traded industries.^[72]

(xii) What coverage mechanisms would be sure that the advantages of federally-funded analysis, together with entry to ensuing tech, financial alternatives, and improved high quality of life, attain all Americans?

Withdraw the NIH Intramural Research Program Access Planning Policy. On January 10, 2025, in considered one of the Biden administration’s remaining actions, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued an Intramural Research Program (IRP) Access Planning Policy whose goal was to “expand equitable patient access to products that emerge from NIH-owned patents.”^[73] The directive required “organizations applying to NIH for certain commercial patent licenses to submit Access Plans to NIH outlining steps they intend to take to promote patient access to those licensed products.”^[74] Pricing was a central focus of the Access Planning Policy, the steering noting that methods candidates might “promote equitable access and affordability in product deployment” might embrace by “Committing to keep prices in the U.S. equal to those in other developed countries” or by “Committing to price reductions once preset sales, revenue, or profit thresholds are reached.”^[75]

But bringing a drug to market represents a fancy, dangerous, prolonged, and expensive course of that may take 14 or extra years at prices measured in the billions of {dollars}. The notion {that a} small start-up licensing potential IP in the type of a novel chemical compound from a college is in any form of place to reliably value a probably ensuing product over a decade and a whole bunch of tens of millions, if not billions, in additional growth and medical trials prices is solely not real looking. (And the similar goes for a lot of merchandise past medication.) Requiring licensees to precisely predict years prematurely how a product ensuing from a licensed IP could be priced would stifle U.S. biopharmaceutical innovation. Therefore, the Trump administration ought to direct the NIH to withdraw its Intramural Research Program Access Planning Policy and in addition be sure that comparable necessities aren’t promulgated throughout different federal businesses.^[76]

The development of transformative scientific breakthroughs requires greater than strong R&D funding—it additionally relies on a complete coverage framework that helps each innovation and well timed deployment.

Innovative U.S. firms have pioneered the breakthrough know-how of multi-cancer early detection (MCED), creating diagnostic assessments that may reliably display screen for the presence of greater than 50 sorts of most cancers from a easy blood draw. MCED is poised to remodel the world’s most cancers screening paradigm—which is vitally vital when one in two girls, and one in three males, are seemingly to develop most cancers sooner or later of their lifetimes.^[77] Unfortunately, the United States has lagged in crafting a coverage setting supporting MCED adoption and inspiring innovation.

Current Medicare statutes create the most important barrier to deployment of breakthrough medical applied sciences by requiring express congressional authorization for every new class of preventive screening, no matter U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval standing. For MCED applied sciences this statutory hole prevents Medicare beneficiaries from accessing FDA-approved assessments regardless of their transformative potential. The barrier’s affect extends past affected person entry: it weakens incentives for continued private-sector funding in high-risk medical analysis and dangers ceding American management in precision drugs to international rivals, specifically China.^[78]

The United States merely can’t afford to squander its lead in MCED by permitting regulatory roadblocks to stay in the approach of the {industry}’s additional growth. The bipartisan Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act (H.R. 842/S.339) provides a sensible treatment by establishing an evidence-based pathway for protection of FDA-approved breakthrough applied sciences whereas preserving CMS’s authority to decide applicable protection parameters. These reforms are in keeping with the strategy taken by Congress with colonoscopy screening—which in the end paved the approach for great progress America has achieved in the screening of colon cancers. Importantly they’d keep rigorous security and efficacy requirements whereas eliminating arbitrary delays that at present separate regulatory approval from affected person entry, thereby strengthening the complete innovation ecosystem from fundamental analysis by way of medical deployment.

(xiii) How can the federal gov strengthen analysis safety to defend delicate applied sciences and dual-use analysis whereas minimizing compliance burdens on researchers?

Create tiered threat categorizations for applied sciences. In apply, the present system for analysis safety usually depends on broad, compliance-heavy necessities that aren’t persistently tiered to the precise sensitivity of the analysis or the menace setting. The federal authorities doesn’t use a single, unified definition of “sensitive technology” or “dual-use”; as an alternative, it operationalizes sensitivity by way of a number of, partially overlapping regimes. The present mannequin defines these classes primarily by way of export-control lists (the Export Administration Regulation’s Commerce Control List and the International Traffic in Arms’s U.S. Munitions List) and some domain-specific oversight regimes (e.g., the U.S. Government Policy for Oversight of Dual-use Research of Concern and Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential in the life sciences). However, these mechanisms are anchored primarily to recognized gadgets, brokers, or moderately foreseeable misuse pathways, quite than systematically tiering fundamental analysis areas by how they could change into dual-use over time; this could depart rising dangers underappreciated, and a few disciplines could not view themselves as a part of the analysis/safety drawback set.

The centralization of dangers by way of tiered categorization is required exactly due to the political economic system in scientific communities and analysis organizations/universities. There is little incentive to self-assess that fundamental analysis, distant from sensible dual-use purposes, can construct rival nations’ capacities. Yet, this occurs in apply. For instance, fundamental analysis on how micro organism defend themselves from viruses helped allow CRISPR gene modifying, which is now broadly handled as biosecurity-relevant as a result of it may possibly decrease limitations to modifying organisms, together with probably dangerous ones; likewise, open computer-vision and machine-learning analysis has been included into navy intelligence/surveillance and concentrating on assist.

Develop safety evaluation pointers. Research scrutiny is closely targeted on tasks that obtain federal funding, however most R&D is pushed by personal funding. Although screening and organizational threat assessments for protection contractors usually work as supposed, they have a tendency to overlook personal R&D in areas with capabilities that might be used for twin functions however are at present business-oriented. For instance, robotics for family use or software-heavy R&D.

A easy answer to this drawback could be to introduce safety evaluation pointers for firms making use of for the broadly used R&D tax incentive. In different phrases, to qualify for tax advantages for personal R&D, candidates ought to meet a fundamental set of safety requirements, equivalent to these established by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Department of Homeland Security.

Assemble the interagency analysis safety working group. The interagency analysis safety working group was established beneath the National Science and Technology Council and approved by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020 to implement the continued implementation of NSPM-33, which instituted necessities for disclosure and analysis safety infrastructure for analysis recipients. OSTP ought to commonly convene the interagency analysis safety working group to be sure that NSPM-33 continues to be applied throughout all authorities businesses and that safety measures are coordinated and harmonized throughout authorities.

Another probably efficient analysis safety mannequin would borrow from cybersecurity ideas to shift away from at this time’s largely binary, front-loaded strategy to vetting researchers and transfer towards a extra strong endpoint safety and zero-trust structure mannequin. Currently, universities assess analysis safety threat most closely at the hiring stage, which requires excessive quantities of compliance and infrequently ends in a go/no-go resolution that both blocks expertise completely or assumes low dangers thereafter.

A zero-trust–impressed framework might as an alternative permit broader participation whereas segmenting entry primarily based on threat and sensitivity, asking explicitly what information, instruments, or analysis outputs a college is snug exposing if compromised. This means steady checks all through the analysis lifecycle, together with in the laboratory, collaborations, entry, and offboarding, quite than concentrating compliance on particular person disclosures. Such an strategy would cut back friction for researchers and would possibly enhance total compliance assets, however would higher shift that accountability to universities with out choking off openness or expertise.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation commends the Trump administration for working to reform and speed up the American scientific enterprise. The success of this effort shall be important to enhancing the international competitiveness of U.S. science and know-how over the coming decade.

Thank you in your consideration.