Sponsor - NSF

 

 
The National Science Foundation (NSF) was established by Congress through the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense." With a current annual budget of about $5 billion, NSF funds the people, ideas and tools to boost U.S. leadership in all aspects of science, mathematics and engineering research, and education. In contrast, other federal agencies support research focused on specific missions, such as health, energy or defense.

Results. NSF funding is an investment in the future, and results include such developments as: Doppler radar, the Internet, Web browsers and the Google search engine, American Sign Language, bar codes, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ink jet printers, computer-aided design (CAD) systems, lasers used in eye surgery, buckeyballs, nanotubes, camcorders, and tissue engineering.

Research and Infrastructure. NSF support is present throughout the international research community, through the 20,000 grants funded each year at nearly 2,000 U.S. research organizations, through cooperative projects between U.S. scientists and engineers and their foreign colleagues, and through NSF's support for the scientific research infrastructure. This infrastructure includes:

  • the world's largest single-dish radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile, the Gemini telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, and other astronomy centers around the globe,
  • shared high-performance computing resources at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center,
  • 24 U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research sites on unique ecosystems;
  • observation and computation facilities at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado,
  • operation support for research ships at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
  • shake tables, geotechnical centrifuges, tsunami wave basins and other instruments linked by information technology as part of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, and
  • operation of McMurdo Station, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, and Palmer Station in Antarctica, management of the United States Antarctic Program and coordination of all U.S. scientific research done in Antarctica.

Organization. As an independent federal agency, NSF does not fall under any cabinet department. NSF's activities are guided by the 24-member National Science Board. NSF program activities are organized by directorates and offices: Biological Sciences; Computer and Information Science and Engineering; Education and Human Resources; Engineering; Geosciences; Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences and Polar Programs. Some divisions focus on specific areas, such as international research, or survey data collection and reporting. NSF increasingly emphasizes cross-directorate and multi-disciplinary programs and projects.

In addition to its "core" research and education activities, NSF supports six priority areas: Biocomplexity in the Environment; Information Technology Research; Nanoscale Science and Engineering; 21st Century Workforce; Mathematical Sciences; and Human and Social Dynamics.

http://www.nsf.gov