On Thanksgiving Eve, November 26, 2025, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) requested enter from events on federal coverage updates “that aim to accelerate the American scientific enterprise, enable groundbreaking discoveries, and ensure that scientific progress and technological innovation benefit all Americans.” 90 Fed. Reg. 54412. OSTP states that “[t]hrough this Request for Information (RFI), OSTP seeks input from academia; private sector organizations; industry groups; state, local, and tribal governments; and other stakeholders regarding priorities for strengthening the science and technology (S&T) ecosystem to support both the expansion of scientific knowledge and the mechanisms to transition these discoveries into the marketplace.” According to OSTP, the RFI “will inform the formulation of Executive branch efforts to advance and maintain U.S. S&T leadership.” Responses are due on Boxing Day, December 26, 2025.
According to OSTP, a number of forces are reshaping how scientific analysis is carried out. OSTP states that new institutional fashions equivalent to centered analysis organizations function exterior conventional educational buildings; rising questions in fields like quantum info science and biology require ever-closer collaboration between engineering and fundamental science; and speedy progress in synthetic intelligence (AI) guarantees to speed up discovery cycles. These shifts demand steady enchancment in how the federal authorities helps scientific analysis. OSTP notes that concurrently, “America’s strategic competitors have placed unprecedented focus on scientific advancement.” The convergence of latest scientific alternatives, intensifying world competitors, and proof that conventional approaches to analysis might be enormously improved “call for a comprehensive assessment of how the Federal government prioritizes and structures scientific research.”
Questions Included within the RFI
OSTP invitations responses to a number of of the next questions:
(i) What coverage adjustments to federal funding mechanisms, procurement processes, or partnership authorities would allow stronger public-private collaboration and permit America to faucet into its huge non-public sector to drive higher use-inspired fundamental and early-stage utilized analysis?
(ii) How can the federal authorities higher assist the interpretation of scientific discoveries from academia, nationwide laboratories, and different analysis establishments into sensible functions? Specifically, what adjustments to know-how switch insurance policies, translational packages, or business incentives would speed up the trail from laboratory to market?
(iii) What insurance policies would encourage the formation and scaling of regional innovation ecosystems that join native companies, universities, instructional establishments, and the native workforce — significantly in areas the place the federal authorities has present analysis belongings like nationwide laboratories or federally-funded analysis facilities?
(iv) How can federal insurance policies strengthen the function performed by small- and medium-sized companies as each drivers of innovation and as early adopters of rising applied sciences?
(v) What empirically grounded findings from metascience analysis and progress research might inform federal grantmaking processes to maximise scientific productiveness and enhance whole return on funding?
(vi) What reforms will allow the American scientific enterprise to pursue extra high-risk, high-reward analysis that would rework our scientific understanding and unlock new applied sciences, whereas sustaining the incremental science important for cumulative manufacturing of data?
(vii) How can the federal authorities assist novel institutional fashions for analysis that complement conventional college buildings and allow initiatives that require huge assets, interdisciplinary coordination, or prolonged timelines?
(viii) How can the federal authorities leverage and put together for advances in AI techniques that will rework scientific analysis — together with automated speculation era, experimental design, literature synthesis, and autonomous experimentation? What infrastructure investments, organizational fashions, and workforce improvement methods are wanted to appreciate these capabilities whereas sustaining scientific rigor and analysis integrity?
(ix) What particular federal statutes, laws, or insurance policies create pointless boundaries to scientific analysis or the deployment of analysis outcomes?
(x) How can federal packages higher determine and develop scientific expertise throughout the nation, significantly leveraging digital instruments and distributed analysis fashions to interact researchers exterior conventional educational facilities?
(xi) How can the federal 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?
(xii) What coverage mechanisms would make sure that the advantages of federally-funded analysis — together with entry to ensuing applied sciences, financial alternatives, and improved high quality of life — attain all Americans?
(xiii) How can the federal authorities strengthen analysis safety to guard delicate applied sciences and dual-use analysis whereas minimizing compliance burdens on researchers?
Commentary
The “valley of death” — the hole between fundamental science and business viability — is an acute level of failure within the U.S. innovation pipeline. Overcoming this requires coverage changes that deal with business companions as important co-creators, not merely clients. OSTP’s request comes on the heels of efforts to revive “Gold Standard Science” to enhance the federal scientific enterprise — a broader push to reshape all elements of scientific actions and to make sure the United States stays a world chief in rigorous, evidence-based science. The RFI comes at a pivotal second as the present scientific ecosystem is being quickly reshaped by rising fields (e.g., computing/physics (quantum), life sciences (biology/chemistry), and automation/information evaluation (AI)) and intensifying world competitors. To keep U.S. management, the federal authorities should pivot from relying solely on conventional assist fashions equivalent to grants to universities and nationwide laboratories to a framework that emphasizes environment friendly public-private collaboration and fashionable, science-driven regulation.
This RFI supplies a possibility to advocate to the White House for an improved pipeline from lab bench to business merchandise. From a toxicological and regulatory perspective, implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is a related matter to contemplate. Regulatory uncertainty and delays within the implementation of TSCA, particularly new chemical evaluations, push an more and more insurmountable impediment to innovation onto companies which are working to develop sustainable product chemistries. For sectors like superior supplies, biotechnology, and the chemical business — fields elementary to the Administration’s science and technology goals — the regulatory path to market have to be clear, well timed, and risk-based. In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) well timed and risk-based assessment of present chemical substances will put de-selection strain on conventional, high-hazard applied sciences. The implementation of TSCA supplies a important case examine in how federal coverage can inadvertently erect pointless boundaries to bringing new, extra sustainable chemistries and downstream merchandise to market.
The present implementation of TSCA’s new chemical assessment course of has, in observe, led to prolonged assessment instances and the next regulatory burden, significantly for sustainable and novel chemistries supposed to interchange older, less-safe legacy substances. Much can and ought to be accomplished to enhance this course of. EPA should adhere strictly to statutory deadlines for premanufacture discover (PMN) assessment, particularly for chemical substances recognized as low-volume, low-exposure, or these deemed inherently safer by design (e.g., inexperienced chemistry merchandise). TSCA implementation should additionally higher stability security to human well being and the surroundings with the targets of the round financial system. EPA ought to present clear, specific, and constant steerage on how recycling, upcycling, and the reprocessing of supplies — which can contain hint legacy substances — are handled below the brand new chemical and important new use discover (SNUN) provisions. EPA should make each the PMN and SNUN assessment processes sooner, extra constant, and thoughtful of precise danger (i.e., hazard and publicity), particularly for improvements designed to be inherently safer or a part of a sustainable round financial system. Punitive or ambiguous interpretations of those guidelines hinder home efforts to determine resilient provide chains for important supplies. Our home functionality to fabricate chemical merchandise is being off shored by some to keep away from unknown and unpredictable regulatory outcomes below the present implementation of TSCA. Innovators are discovering even the excessive barrier for market entry below the European Union’s (EU) Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) simpler than commercializing below TSCA.
Some meals for thought:
- Are there methods to strengthen public-private collaboration and commercialization, particularly for small- and medium-sized companies?
- Should EPA enhance its use of strong computational toxicology and new method methodologies to hurry up assessments with out sacrificing security?
- How can EPA undertake good insurance policies and laws to make sure public security and environmental safety whereas lowering pointless boundaries to innovation and offering market certainty for business to confidently spend money on analysis and improvement?
Consider submitting feedback to OSTP together with your concepts on the way to advance the American (and world) scientific enterprise, maybe by making a regulatory method that’s efficient, environment friendly, and science-based, with a transparent and predictable pathway to market.