NSF in 2025: Keeping U.S. scientific research and innovation on the cutting edge | NSF

For 75 years, the U.S. National Science Foundation has helped safe the nation’s management in science and engineering — and the prosperity, nationwide safety and financial competitiveness that rely on it.

NSF investments in 2025 centered on vital expertise areas resembling synthetic intelligence, quantum, semiconductors and superior manufacturing. As NSF embarks on a brand new period whereas persevering with to help research throughout all scientific disciplines, these investments will set up the sturdy basis of research and innovation that retains the nation at the forefront of worldwide innovation all through the twenty first century.

Supporting revolutionary research that propels U.S. management in vital areas

Accelerating scientific discovery with AI

In 2025, NSF strengthened U.S. management in AI via its National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) and National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes program.

Through the NSF-led NAIRR pilot, greater than 600 research groups at the moment are linked to a shared nationwide AI infrastructure, getting access to superior instruments, knowledge, coaching and experience. NSF additionally initiated efforts to ascertain a NAIRR Operations Center, which can information the transition of NAIRR from a pilot right into a coordinated nationwide program.

The company additionally expanded its AI Research Institutes program with a $100 million investment in partnership with business leaders, supporting research in AI literacy, human-AI collaboration, supplies discovery, drug improvement and science, expertise, engineering and arithmetic training. This effort strengthens a nationwide community of institutes centered on high-impact AI research. Other NSF-led AI applications complement these investments, together with:

Together, these investments helped chart a decisive course to cement U.S. dominance in synthetic intelligence via strengthened U.S. management in AI. NSF’s help of the Trump Administration’s AI Action Plan and the targets of the Genesis Mission, helps speed up scientific discovery, making certain the U.S. stays at the forefront of AI research, training and innovation.

Harnessing the quantum-scale universe

For a long time, NSF has invested in the research driving immediately’s quantum revolution, laying the basis for applied sciences that leverage quantum phenomena.

In 2025, NSF-supported groups achieved main milestones: one constructed the largest quantum bit array ever recorded — 6,100 neutral-atom quantum bits trapped and managed by lasers — whereas one other built-in all the key parts for scalable, error-corrected quantum computation. These breakthroughs carry sensible quantum computing nearer to actuality, promising computing speeds far past immediately’s supercomputers, ultra-secure communications and new supplies that might rework medication and business.

NSF additionally selected the first four teams to design infrastructure for the NSF National Quantum Virtual Laboratory, which can present researchers nationwide with entry to cutting-edge quantum {hardware} and software program, making it simpler to check concepts and flip discoveries into sensible applied sciences. In partnership with U.Okay. Research and Innovation, NSF is exploring how quantum info impacts chemical reactions and molecular programs, paving the approach for breakthroughs in computing, ultra-precise navigation and safe communications.

Fueling innovation and financial development via partnerships

NSF helps partnerships throughout authorities, academia and business in vital areas like semiconductors, superior manufacturing and next-generation communications.

In 2025, NSF named 15 finalists for the second competitors beneath the Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) program, funding tasks that span energy-grid safety, quantum computing and vital mineral extraction. A $135 million preliminary NSF Engines funding has already leveraged greater than $1 billion in matching commitments, accelerating applied sciences that hold the U.S. globally aggressive in AI, chipmaking, quantum science, power storage and catastrophe preparedness.

NSF can be investing over $74 million in six Mathematical Sciences Research Institutes, catalyzing research that tackles immediately’s challenges and prepares for tomorrow’s breakthroughs — from enhancing affected person care in hospital emergency rooms to detecting exoplanets utilizing quantum physics. Past work at these institutes has improved MRI imaging pace and accuracy and established the mathematical foundations for AI applied sciences.

The newly launched NSF Verticals-enabling Intelligent NEtwork Systems (VINES) program will make investments as much as $100 million to construct next-generation wi-fi networks in partnerships with business and collaborators, unlocking efficiencies and new capabilities in superior manufacturing, precision agriculture, distant well being care, vital infrastructure and sensible grids.

Finally, NSF introduced a brand new initiative designed to launch and scale a brand new era of impartial research organizations that may focus on technical challenges and bottlenecks that conventional college and business labs can’t simply resolve on their very own. The Tech Labs initiative will help groups of researchers, scientists and engineers who will pursue technical breakthroughs which have the potential to reshape or create total expertise sectors. Input from academia, policymakers, nonprofits, philanthropy, state and native authorities, enterprise capital, the non-public sector and every other events will form the initiative. NSF anticipates vital funding later in FY 2026, that includes giant, multi-year awards for chosen groups.

Training tomorrow’s scientific workforce

One of NSF’s most profitable, longstanding efforts to broaden research capability and expertise improvement throughout all components of the nation is the NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR). In 2025, the company invested greater than $65 million via NSF EPSCoR to strengthen research infrastructure and put together the next-generation workforce. These investments embody:

• Supporting establishments throughout Montana, Idaho and Louisiana to ascertain NSF EPSCoR Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology. These facilities will broaden information, improve research productiveness and appeal to college students into STEM fields.
• Six main awards throughout 11 jurisdictions via the EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program that may strengthen research capability and drive translational research. These four-year grants help research by organizations in Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota and different states and span areas resembling performance of digital gadgets, biotechnology and AI-driven well being care.
• Funding early- and mid-career scientists via the EPSCoR Research Fellows program, enabling tasks in superior and semiconductor manufacturing, AI, quantum and biotechnology — research that creates jobs, strengthens native economies and fuels U.S. innovation.

Additional efforts included expanding K-12 AI education, funding graduate traineeships in AI, quantum, biotechnology and translational science; and teaching semiconductor manufacturing skills to highschool and neighborhood faculty college students via AI-powered digital actuality.

Building the research infrastructure of the future

Cutting-edge research infrastructure — from particular person laboratories to main nationwide services — is enabling breakthroughs throughout AI, quantum science and nationwide safety. In June, the NSF Zettawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System (NSF ZEUS) grew to become the strongest laser in the U.S. NSF ZEUS is accessible to scientists nationwide, enabling groundbreaking research with functions in medication, nationwide safety, supplies science and astrophysics, in addition to plasma science and quantum physics.
 

Alongside ZEUS, the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory reached a historic milestone by capturing its first images in simply hours of take a look at observations. Millions of galaxies and 1000’s of asteroids appeared in its view, previewing its upcoming 10-year survey that may acquire extra knowledge in its first yr than all earlier optical observatories mixed — fueling discoveries about darkish matter, galaxy formation and planetary protection.

Supporting Nobel laureates

One of NSF’s most impactful legacies is the variety of Nobel laureates, throughout all scientific disciplines, who’ve been and will proceed to be supported by the company. In 2025, six extra researchers, who acquired NSF investments at completely different factors in their careers, had been honored with the Nobel Prize in their respective fields. This brings the complete variety of Nobel laureates supported by NSF to 274.

• Omar M. Yaghi shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for creating metal-organic frameworks — molecular constructions that comprise giant areas in which gases and different chemical compounds could be saved. These frameworks could be personalized for particular functions, resembling harvesting water from desert air, capturing carbon dioxide and storing poisonous gases. To date, scientists have synthesized greater than 100,000 distinct buildings with completely different makes use of. NSF has supported Yaghi all through his profession, starting in 1990 with a postdoctoral research fellowship and persevering with immediately.
• John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis had been honored with the Nobel Prize in physics for his or her discoveries that made it attainable to look at and management quantum conduct — a subatomic phenomenon — in engineered electrical circuits large enough to be held in the hand. This allowed quantum mechanics to be instantly noticed and measured in the lab and led to the creation of superconducting qubits, the constructing blocks of quantum computer systems. Throughout their careers, all three laureates benefited from NSF help that superior their research in superconductivity and quantum applied sciences.
• Joel Mokyr and Peter Howitt acquired the Nobel Prize in economics for explaining how technological innovation and the forces of inventive destruction drive sustained development, a key part of worldwide financial development since the Industrial Revolution. NSF supported Mokyr’s research over 4 a long time, and a number of NSF grants have funded Howitt’s research.