EXECUTIVE
OFFICE
OF THE PRESIDENT
WASHINGTON
, D.C.
20502
NSTM-5
I
M-26-16
July 21, 2026
MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
FROM:
MICHAEL
J.
KRATSIOS
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ASSIST ANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
DIRECTOR, OFFICE O~
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TECHNOLOGY POLICY
RUSSELL
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DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
SUBJECT:
Ushering in a New Golden Age
of
American Innovation: Fiscal Year 2028
Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities
American leadership in science and technology (S&T) underpins our economic prosperity,
national security, and public health. As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary
of
declaring its independence,
we
stand
at
the threshold
of
a new golden age
of
American innovation.
The future
of
American leadership in the emerging technologies that will define this century, from
frontier artificial intelligence (Al)
to
quantum technologies and advanced nuclear fission and
fusion, depends in part on core Federal investments in foundational research, the basic and use
inspired inquiry upon which a broad range
of
sciences and engineering work depends. Rapid
technological advances are transforming the way scientific research is conducted, the scientific
questions that we can now ask, and the scientific instruments we can build. To . usher in this new
golden age, we must renew the research and development (R&D) enterprise on which our scientific
leadership depends.
Eighty years ago, Vannevar Bush's
Science:
The
Endless Frontier
laid the foundation for the
modem American scientific enterprise, giving rise to the National Science Foundation and a
partnership between Federal Government, universities, and industry that won the American
Century. Today, that enterprise is being reshaped by forces Bush could not have foreseen. Global
competitors are racing
to
challenge U.S. scientific leadership, developing new methods
to
drive
discovery and innovation. At the same time, our own enterprise has fallen out
of
balance. Industry
now drives a growing share
of
innovation and even basic research,
1
where its share
of
national
R&D funding has doubled over the past half century,2 and yet we have largely not updated how
the Federal Government funds research or partners with the private sector. The government invests
more in R&D than ever before, yet much
of
the non-defense increase is concentrated in the life
sciences
3
and the pace
of
significant breakthroughs has slowed.
4
And while transformative
discoveries are still made in America, too often we fail
to
capitalize on them at home, ceding the
manufacturing and supply chains that tum discovery into industry
to
competitors abroad. The
1
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, National Patterns
ofR&D
Resources (2023-24 edition).
2
Ibid. Table 7.
3
National Science Board. Science & Engineering Indicators, Discovery:
R&D
Activity and
Research Publications (2025 edition).
4
https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssm.3822691.
opportunity before us is clear: by integrating industry more fully into the research enterprise,
funding transformative science, especially in the physical sciences and engineering, and
reconnecting scientific discovery with manufacturing and skilled crafts, America can once again
fully translate scientific discovery into broad-based prosperity, creating new applications, high-
paying jobs, and stronger regional economies.
This memorandum provides guidance to Federal departments and agencies (agencies) to
recalibrate the Nation’s S&T enterprise, implementing the recommendations in
Science: A New
Golden Age
and advancing the President’s vision of a Golden Age of American Innovation. The
guidance identifies Administration R&D priorities for agencies to consider, as appropriate, in
Fiscal Year (FY) 2028 Budget formulation and related planning. These priorities include: (i)
rebalancing R&D portfolios toward foundational research and the physical sciences and
engineering, (ii) advancing national S&T missions, (iii) applying AI and emerging technologies to
accelerate American research and innovation, (iv) expanding R&D infrastructure for broader
ecosystem use, (v) translating scientific advances into stronger regional ecosystems and broad-
based prosperity, (vi) considering new funding mechanisms and institutional models to support
frontier science, (vii) exploring better ways to identify and develop scientific talent, (viii)
rigorously studying, evaluating, and improving how Federal science is funded, and (ix) integrating
Federal R&D into the broader S&T enterprise. Agencies should account for this guidance, as
appropriate, in their FY 2028 Budget submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
FY 2028 R&D PRIORITY AREAS
Invest in Foundational Research to Drive Scientific Breakthroughs for Emerging
Technologies
Foundational research, including basic and use-inspired inquiry across the sciences and
engineering, remains the bedrock of American scientific and technological leadership. The United
States derives outsized long-term security, economic, and societal returns from foundational
research, which expands the frontier of knowledge and leads to the growth of new industries. The
Federal Government’s comparative advantage relative to private industry lies here, in supporting
work where payoffs are long-horizon, broadly distributed, and difficult to realize privately. In their
FY 2028 budget submissions to OMB, agencies should seek to increase the share of foundational
research relative to later-stage development.
Many of the Administration’s strategic technology priorities, including AI, quantum information
science, semiconductors, advanced communications, robotics, advanced manufacturing, nuclear
fission and fusion, and space systems, all rely on foundational research across the physical
sciences, computer science, and engineering. However, the physical sciences and engineering have
declined as a share of the Federal research portfolio over an extended period, even as the strategic
importance of these fields has grown.
5
Agencies are encouraged to prioritize both the absolute
level and the relative share of funding directed within budget guidance levels to the physical
sciences (physics, chemistry, materials science, space science,
etc.
), computer science, and
supporting engineering and mathematical disciplines, especially within national security-relevant
research portfolios. In addition, to support Administration priorities in biotechnology and
5
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. Survey of Federal Funds for Research and Development
(2024-2025 edition).
2
biomanufacturing, agencies should prioritize foundational research in the biological sciences over
the life sciences, a broader category not focused on foundational research.
In their FY 2028 Budget submissions to OMB, agencies should note the R&D character
classification of proposed activities as a percentage of their R&D funding portfolio and identify
the specific programs through which the agency proposes to shift its portfolio toward earlier-stage
work. Where agencies propose to significantly expand later-stage development activities, they
should justify why such activities would not occur absent Federal support. Agencies should
prioritize funding for:
•
Physical Sciences
. Agencies should prioritize foundational research in the physical
sciences, including condensed matter and quantum materials physics, including correlated,
magnetic, and topological states; photonics, addressing the generation, control, and
detection of light; atomic, molecular, and optical physics, addressing precision
measurement and the quantum control of systems; the physics of superconductivity and
other quantum phenomena; plasma and high energy density physics; nuclear physics and
matter under extreme conditions; gravitational physics and geodesy; and space and
planetary physics, including the radiation, plasma, and space-weather conditions in which
space systems operate. These fields underpin quantum science, semiconductors, advanced
communications networks, future computing technologies, advanced nuclear fission and
fusion energy, and space exploration technologies including novel sensing modalities and
precision position, navigation, and timing.
•
Chemistry and Materials Science
. Agencies should prioritize foundational research in
chemistry and materials science, including electronic, photonic, and quantum materials;
the surface, interface, and defect chemistry that governs fabrication and device
performance; materials for extreme environments (
e.g.,
radiation-tolerant, plasma-facing,
and high-temperature); the structure, properties, synthesis, and characterization of
materials, including condensed matter and materials theory, ceramics, metals, polymers
and biomaterials; electrochemistry and solid-state ionics; and catalysis, synthesis, and
reaction mechanisms. These fields underpin quantum science and semiconductors and
extend across advanced manufacturing, energy production and storage, the nuclear fuel
cycle, photonics, and space and hypersonic systems.
•
Mathematics and Computer Science
. Agencies should prioritize foundational research
in the mathematical and computational sciences, including applied and computational
mathematics, numerical analysis and uncertainty quantification; classical and quantum
information theory; algorithms, computational complexity, and cryptography, including
post-quantum cryptography; the mathematics of optimization and control; statistics,
probability, and the foundations of data science; and the foundations of high-performance
and future computing. These fields underpin advanced communications networks and
secure information systems, quantum information science and future computing, and the
modeling, simulation, and verification on which fusion energy, advanced manufacturing,
and space systems depend.
•
Engineering Sciences
. Agencies should prioritize foundational research in engineering
sciences, including microelectronics, photonic, quantum, and microsystem device
engineering and early-stage manufacturing; the electromagnetic, radiofrequency, and
propulsion sciences; the thermal, fluid, and mechanical sciences, including solid mechanics
3
and the mechanics of materials; the dynamics, estimation, and control of complex systems,
including astrodynamics, guidance, and navigation; and magnet, superconducting, and
power-system engineering. These fields underpin semiconductors and advanced
communications networks, advanced manufacturing, space systems, robotics, and fission
and fusion energy.
•
Biological Sciences
. Agencies with general, broad-based life-sciences research missions
should prioritize foundational research in the biological sciences including molecular,
cellular and structural biology; biochemistry and chemical biology; genetics, genomics,
and synthetic and engineering biology; neuroscience and the neural basis of cognition and
behavior; and microbiology and quantitative biology. These fields underpin biotechnology
and biomanufacturing, neurosciences and brain-machine interfaces, and human health and
therapeutics.
Advance National Science and Technology Missions
From the Manhattan Project to the Apollo Program, some of America’s greatest scientific
achievements have come from focused national missions that united the Nation’s brightest minds
behind an ambitious common goal. This Administration has revived that mission-driven model for
a new era of global competition, launching a set of national science and technology efforts
targeting the technologies that will define the coming century. Federal R&D is uniquely suited to
drive these efforts forward by supporting them across every stage from foundational discovery to
demonstration, sustaining the long-horizon and high-risk work the private sector cannot undertake
alone, and convening the partnerships among government, industry, academia, and philanthropy
through which national missions are ultimately achieved. Realizing them will demand a
comparable concentration of national effort. Agencies should align their R&D investments, where
appropriate, with the Administration’s national missions, including:
•
AI
: The Genesis Mission to harness AI to double the productivity and impact of America’s
research enterprise within a decade, including agency-specific contributions across
national S&T challenges and compute and research infrastructure for the American Science
and Security Platform, pursuant to Executive Order 14363;
•
Quantum:
The Quantum Computer for Application Development and Discovery Science
(QC-ADDS) effort to develop a quantum computer at a scale intended to initiate the era of
quantum-enabled scientific discovery, pursuant to Executive Order 14413;
•
Fusion:
Demonstration of commercial fusion power in the United States by the mid-2030s,
following the Department of Energy’s Fusion Science & Technology Roadmap;
•
Space:
Return of Americans to the lunar surface by 2028, the construction of a lunar base,
the National Initiative for American Space Nuclear Power, and the development of a
responsive and adaptive national security space architecture, pursuant to Executive Order
14369;
•
Robotics:
General-purpose autonomous systems capable of dexterous manipulation,
mobility, and reliable operation in real-world environments, to initiate the era of physical
AI-driven scientific discovery and American reindustrialization; and
4
•
Semiconductors:
Next-generation semiconductor technologies, including EUV-and
beyond photolithography, 3D advanced packaging, and novel materials for future
semiconductor devices and technology nodes.
Agencies should support these missions through the full range of R&D policy instruments
available to them. Each agency should identify, through the FY 2028 Budget process and other
established budget review channels how its mission-specific research priorities and programs can
support these national goals, consistent with statutory authorities, agency missions, and available
resources. In their FY 2028 budget submissions, agencies should consider how to prioritize their
R&D infrastructure, including user facilities, testbeds, and high-performance computing assets,
toward mission needs and expand access for university and industry partners. Agencies should
also propose investments that employ the full set of talent and incentive mechanisms at their
disposal, including graduate and postdoctoral fellowships to build the skilled workforce these
missions require, and prizes, grand challenges, and competitions to mobilize the broadest possible
range of innovators toward the hardest problems.
Build the Foundation for a New Era of Scientific Discovery
AI and emerging technologies have immense potential to transform science by unlocking novel
experimental and analytical capabilities, enabling new ways to organize the research enterprise,
and prompting new fields of scientific inquiry. In November 2025, President Trump launched the
Genesis Mission, a whole-of-government effort to harness the AI-driven computing revolution
with the intent to double the productivity and impact of American science and engineering within
a decade. Rather than crowding subfields of AI research where private capital is already abundant,
the Genesis Mission is designed to ensure America’s scientific enterprise is first and fastest to
harness these technologies for discovery across the scientific landscape.
Agencies should identify opportunities to integrate AI and other emerging technologies into
research as appropriate; prepare Federal scientific instrumentation, datasets, and compute for the
AI-for-science transformation; and treat support for the Genesis Mission as a central R&D priority.
Proposed agency efforts in this area should be noted in FY 2028 Budget submissions. Agencies
should prioritize funding for:
•
AI as an Instrument of Scientific Discovery
. Agencies should fund research that uses AI
as a new instrument of scientific discovery, not merely as a tool to augment existing
capabilities. Agencies should seek out proposals that thoughtfully integrate AI into
scientific workflows, rather than projects that apply AI for incremental gains or without
clear justification for why the problem requires AI-specific methods. Agencies should align
R&D funding with the Genesis Mission’s National S&T Challenge areas where appropriate
and propose new or expanded challenges consistent with their own priorities. Given the
scale of private sector investment in AI, agencies should prioritize work that industry is
unlikely to pursue on its own, including pre-competitive research outputs and enabling
platform technologies.
•
Scientific Foundation Model Development
. Agencies should propose investments that
support domain-specific scientific foundation models that enable high-fidelity simulations
of natural phenomena and accelerate scientific discovery across Genesis Mission’s
National S&T Challenge areas, including advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical
materials, nuclear fission and fusion, quantum information science, and semiconductors,
5
and coordinate with other agencies as applicable. These models require curated scientific
datasets and compute that no performer can assemble alone, making the Federal
Government uniquely well-positioned to develop them as shared, pre-competitive assets
for the research community.
•
Scientific Data Generation for AI
. Agencies should propose efforts to make internal
scientific datasets available for use and investments in the data infrastructure that makes
them accessible for AI training and inference. Agencies should create incentives for
researchers to curate and share valuable data that is routinely abandoned due to lack of
dedicated funding or recognition, including experimental records, negative results, and
operational data from laboratory procedures. Agencies should further support the creation,
curation, and stewardship of ambitious new datasets that could open entirely new fields of
inquiry or deliver exceptional value to the Nation’s S&T enterprise. As laboratory
automation matures, agencies should propose investments in infrastructure to capture data
at an industrial scale, laying the groundwork for a future of rapid, autonomous scientific
discovery.
•
Integration of AI with Scientific Instrumentation
. Agencies should build on the Genesis
Mission by proposing investments in robotics, automated laboratories, modernization of
user facilities to operate within closed-loop AI scientific workflows, and autonomous
control of large-scale experiments in which AI systems generate hypotheses, conduct
experiments, interpret results, and iterate in real time. Agencies should leverage their
purchasing power to build domestic supply chains for AI-ready scientific instrumentation
and drive the redesign of these instruments with open interfaces, standardized data formats,
and cross-vendor interoperability, making it easier for researchers to connect instruments
and use the software tools best suited to their work.
Expand World-Class R&D Infrastructure for Broad Use
The productivity of Federal R&D depends on scientific infrastructure, including the physical
platforms, user facilities, instrumentation, compute, and laboratory spaces through which research
is conducted. These assets have long planning horizons, high fixed costs, and operating
requirements that extend well beyond the grants they support, and are often out of reach for
individual investigators and institutions. When broadly accessible, this infrastructure enables
scientists to pursue cutting-edge research and focus on conducting their best science, rather than
the time and capital required to build their own infrastructure and facilities.
In their FY 2028 budget submissions to OMB, agencies should assess scientific infrastructure
needs deliberately rather than treating them as a residual claim on research grants. In particular,
agencies should propose investments in mid-scale instrumentation, fully funded within a fiscal
year and aligned with Administration priorities, given it has historically been underfunded relative
to its scientific importance; advanced compute; and sustained operating support for user facilities
and shared platforms. Where agencies propose to significantly reduce or defer these investments,
they should justify the proposal and explain how they will address the resulting gaps and sustain
operation of existing facilities. To expand the reach of investments in scientific infrastructure,
agencies should prioritize funding for:
•
User Facilities for the S&T Ecosystem
. Agencies should propose investments in cutting-
edge R&D infrastructure and instrumentation to enable researchers and innovators to
6
validate new hypotheses, test prototypes, and scale new technologies, lowering barriers to
frontier research. Proposed investments should be consistent with overarching
Administration priorities to both maximize the use of existing infrastructure by addressing
deferred maintenance and increase efficiency by reducing footprints and when necessary,
include new infrastructure to achieve the greatest utilization by a broad community of
researchers, including the private sector and other non-Federal researchers. Agencies
should consider the resources needed to increase access to Federal R&D facilities by
adopting evaluation criteria that weigh innovative potential and commercial urgency
alongside scientific merit, streamlining Cooperative Research and Development
Agreements and licensing processes, and reducing administrative burdens on industry
users. These arrangements should encourage facilities to leverage industry cost-share
arrangements and user-fee revenue to expand capacity and fund next-generation
instrumentation.
•
Advanced Compute for Federal R&D
. Compute is the foundation of AI-enabled science,
and Federal infrastructure must keep pace with the scale and flexible access researchers
now require. Agencies should propose investments that expand access to advanced
compute infrastructure, including unified access portals, standardized applications, and
common data and software environments that allow researchers to move work seamlessly
across facilities. Application processes should lower the barrier to entry for students,
individual investigators, and small teams, particularly for fast-turnaround projects. Federal
compute investment should offer capabilities differentiated from the commercial market,
such as highly secure data centers for sensitive research, access to unique Federal datasets,
and specialized AI accelerators and computing architectures. Where commercial compute
is cost-effective and meets researcher needs, agencies should pursue public-private
partnerships or procure capacity through commercial providers to improve agility and time
to-science.
Leverage R&D to Strengthen Regional Manufacturing and Industry
Federal R&D investments can be leveraged to translate scientific discoveries into benefits for all
Americans, securing broad-based prosperity and supporting the reindustrialization of our Nation.
Achieving these objectives require Federal investments that pair foundational research with
advanced manufacturing, strengthen regional ecosystems, build resilient supply chains, develop a
skilled technical workforce, and catalyze non-Federal investment to the greatest extent possible.
Agencies should prioritize funding for manufacturing R&D across strategic technologies with the
goal of building domestic manufacturing capacity and supply chains to produce the next generation
of semiconductors, advanced materials, biotechnology, nuclear technologies, and robotics.
Manufacturing R&D spans the full research spectrum: the manufacturing science underlying how
things are made, including process science, materials science, metrology, automation, and the
underlying physics, chemistry, and engineering; advanced engineering methods and production
technologies; translational programs such as manufacturing innovation institutes, pilot lines, and
demonstration facilities that bridge laboratory discovery and production; and supply chain
analytics. Cost-share arrangements should generally be considered, and where appropriate,
expected for later-stage manufacturing and demonstration activities, while earlier-stage
manufacturing science should be supported on terms appropriate to foundational research.
7
R&D PRIORITY PRACTICES
1. Develop New Mechanisms to Support Frontier Science
America must continue to expand the repertoire of institutions and R&D funding mechanisms it
uses to conduct science, enabling our best researchers to tackle the most ambitious S&T challenges
that exist. These mechanisms should account for forces reshaping the scientific enterprise,
including the rise of funding from industry and philanthropy, and the growing importance of
genuinely integrated, multidisciplinary teams.
The Federal Government should incentivize new institutional models that complement
conventional principal-investigator driven laboratories, industry laboratories, and Federal R&D
facilities. It should also supplement conventional, consensus-driven peer review, which excels at
advancing established lines of inquiry, with new review mechanisms that are better suited to
recognizing high-risk, high-reward research, early-career talent, or ideas that fall outside
established disciplinary boundaries. Agencies should adopt a deliberate, portfolio-based approach
that matches funding mechanisms to the S&T challenges they seek to address, maximizing Federal
return on investment through an explicit mix of modalities, risk profiles, and time horizons. A
broader menu of institutional structures and funding mechanisms will enable new forms of
scientific work, encourage scientists to pursue novel lines of inquiry, and attract higher-caliber
reviewers empowered to make bold bets.
Agencies are encouraged to review their existing institutional models and funding mechanisms,
explore new ones to close gaps in areas critical for national priorities, and construct balanced
Federal R&D portfolios according to the following principles:
•
Support a Diverse Portfolio of Institutions
. The Federal Government should reflect a
portfolio of institutions that collectively advance the core objectives of the Nation’s S&T
enterprise, including conducting a range of scientific work, training the next generation of
scientists, and translating scientific discoveries into concrete benefits for Americans.
Agencies should identify objectives that remain unaddressed because no existing
institution is well-suited to pursue them. One notable gap is agile, mid-scale science:
infrastructure-heavy, multidisciplinary basic research that requires coordinated teams of
ten to a hundred people. Agencies have begun to address these gaps through new models
like the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) X-Labs and certain Advanced Research
Projects Agency programs. Agencies should consider these models and experiment with
additional designs to enable new types of scientific pursuits.
•
Increase Grant Durations for Transformative Research
. Agencies should expand the
number of long-duration grants, ideally lasting five years or more, that give our best
researchers the time and autonomy to pursue bold, ambitious projects whose most
important results may take years to emerge. These awards should be fully-funded in year
one, with all resources earmarked upfront, to minimize administrative burdens and reduce
pressure for researchers to generate intermediate results to secure continued funding. This
upfront commitment should be paired with clear performance metrics and periodic reviews,
with the understanding that funding may be withdrawn and redirected if needed. Existing
programs, such as the National Institute of Health (NIH) Director’s Pioneer Award and the
DOW Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, offer useful models for long-duration,
investigator-centered support for creative basic research.
8
•
Expand Use of Fast Grants for Exploratory Projects
. Agencies should consider
establishing or expanding, where authorized and consistent with available resources,
flexible, low-friction “fast grants” to support preliminary research, exploratory projects,
and time-sensitive work. These programs should feature simplified applications requiring
just a few pages of writing, rapid review timelines of under one month, and award sizes
calibrated to proof-of-concept work. Agencies should encourage greater use of existing
mechanisms and ensure that they meet their intended timelines, while developing
additional fast-track pathways as needed.
•
Design Ambitious Prizes and Challenges
. Well-designed prizes can spur cross-
disciplinary collaboration, attract nontraditional entrants, mobilize substantial private
capital, and catalyze entirely new industries with a relatively small amount of funding.
Agencies should expand their use of prizes and challenges to advance national missions.
To maximize participation from nontraditional teams, agencies should emphasize
outcome-based goals rather than prescribing specific methods. Prizes should target at least
a 3:1 leverage of private to Federal investment, and may be paired with complementary
incentives such as advance procurement commitments, regulatory fast-tracking, and access
to Federal testing facilities.
•
Experiment with Emerging Funding Mechanisms
. Agencies should study, pilot, and
evaluate whether there are existing models or additional designs for innovative funding
mechanisms beyond those described above and in conjunction with OMB and OSTP.
Mechanisms for consideration could include, as appropriate, “golden tickets” that let
individual agency technical reviewers recommend unconventional proposals that may not
pass consensus-driven review panels, which tend to skew toward funding more incremental
advances; advance market commitments that signal demand for a scientific or technical
capability before it exists, subject to available appropriations and demonstration of
capabilities against clearly defined criteria; regranting models that delegate funding
authority to working scientists to tap distributed expertise; and more speculative
approaches such as quadratic funding or eigenfunding. Such models could surface valuable
ideas too divisive for committees and attract higher-quality reviewers by empowering them
to exercise independent scientific judgment. Such approaches will not be a one-size-fits
all solution to grantmaking, but should be appropriately explored for their potential role in
the Federal R&D portfolio as agencies look to more effectively support the American S&T
enterprise. Agencies should ensure that new funding mechanisms strictly adhere to
agencies’ legal authorities and conflict of interest policies, and that funded proposals meet
a level of scientific rigor appropriate for Gold Standard Science.
2. Identify and Develop Top Technical Talent
The Federal Government should orient around the scientists, engineers, and technicians who serve
our Nation, providing them with the support, freedom, and opportunities needed to do their best
work. S&T workforce programs should select the best and brightest Americans, recognizing that
these individuals are distributed across the Nation, not isolated to major metropolitan areas. The
programs should identify and invest early in high-potential students and early-career individuals,
while cultivating their long-term commitment to America’s S&T enterprise.
9
Agencies with S&T workforce development programs, including graduate fellowships; K-12
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education; and skilled technical
workforce programs should review existing efforts and, where appropriate, propose modifications
or new approaches through established budget and policy processes to:
•
Identify Exceptional Talent Nationwide
. S&T workforce programs should identify and
support all talented Americans across geographies, incomes, and demographics.
Exceptional talent is defined by demonstrated technical ability, not background or identity.
Agencies should therefore anchor selection processes in criteria predictive of STEM
success, such as reasoning assessments, domain competitions, engineering portfolios, and
technical work, rather than relying on self-selection, essays, institutional referrals, or polish
and credentials. Agencies should leverage merit-based identification mechanisms that
cover as many people as possible (
e.g.
, SAT scores or other standardized quantitative
assessments) to find overlooked talent.
•
Expand Advanced K-12 STEM Enrichment Opportunities.
Targeted programs can
accelerate the development of advanced K-12 STEM talent by increasing exposure to
pathways into scientific careers and connecting students with expert mentors and similarly
capable peers. Where appropriate, agencies should support K-12 STEM enrichment
opportunities, such as residential math and science programs and Olympiad-style
competitions, that immerse high-ability students in advanced S&T environments and direct
their ambitions to the hardest open questions.
•
Expand Hands-On Technical Learning
. S&T workforce programs should provide early
and sustained exposure to real-world technical environments. Agencies should treat
research placements in academic, industry, and Federal laboratories as standard
components of high-quality S&T talent development programs. Placements should be
substantive, last at least one semester, and provide participants with meaningful access to
advanced scientific instrumentation, datasets, and challenges not available in traditional
academic settings. Agencies should expand opportunities for hands-on technical learning
as early as high school through work-based learning, vocational training, makerspace
access, and machine shop classes.
•
Support Early-Career Researchers
. Agencies should strengthen support for graduate
students, post-doctoral researchers, and early-career faculty, when research creativity is
often highest but institutional support the weakest. Agencies should expand the use of
fellowship programs and address conditions that limit the mobility of graduate students,
post-doctoral researchers, and early-career researchers as they navigate opportunities in the
S&T enterprise. These programs can provide young scientists with resources and
intellectual freedom during the most pivotal stage of their careers, encouraging them to
remain in the Nation’s S&T enterprise.
•
Support Individuals Agnostic of Institutional Affiliations.
S&T workforce programs
should provide individuals flexibility to choose their research institutions, supervisors, and
topics. Agencies should prioritize programs that distribute funding directly to students and
researchers, similar to NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program, so recipients can
apply the grant to any qualifying institution that best supports their goals and retain it if
they move, encouraging institutions to compete for early-career talent. Agencies should
10
develop the capability to track supported individuals longitudinally across multi-year
transitions, minimizing the need for individuals to re-discover and re-apply for support.
•
Build Flexible Cross-Sector Talent Pathways
. The Nation’s top scientific talent should
be encouraged to gain experience across research cultures and engineering environments
throughout their careers. Agencies should expand opportunities for scientists, engineers,
and skilled technical workers to move fluidly across academia, industry, and Federal R&D
facilities by increasing the flexibility of academic fellowships, establishing cross-
institution placements like joint industry or Federal laboratory Ph.D. programs, and
supporting alternative paths for skilled technical workers to participate in academic training
and scientific discovery.
•
Encourage Broad Post-Fellowship Service
. Federal investments in individuals should
strengthen the Nation’s S&T enterprise. Agencies should consider incorporating service
requirements into fellowship programs while defining service broadly to capture the
myriad ways individuals can leverage their training to advance that enterprise. Qualifying
service could include academic research and training the next generation of American
scientists, entrepreneurship, work in the defense industrial base, advisory roles that shape
Federal S&T priorities, or government and military service. Agencies should aim to make
any service requirements flexible enough for recipients to pursue the highest-impact
opportunities after their fellowship ends and to attract the strongest candidates.
3. Build a Self-Improving Scientific Enterprise
The Federal Government invests approximately two hundred billion dollars in R&D each year, but
allocates comparatively little to understanding which funding mechanisms, institutional models,
workforce development programs, and research practices produce the strongest scientific
outcomes. Agencies should treat the science of science-funding with the same rigor as the science
they fund, and build the organizational capacity to learn, experiment, and improve continuously.
Agencies should assess whether to establish metascience capabilities, where appropriate,
following the guidance below:
•
Establish Metascience Capabilities
. Agencies should establish metascience capabilities
that evaluate what programs actually work and drive organization-wide reforms. Core
responsibilities should include conducting research on how factors such as funding
mechanisms, peer review, and publication practices affect scientific outcomes; piloting
novel funding mechanisms and institutional models; and evaluating pilots and informing
agency-wide portfolio management. These functions should be established at a sufficiently
high level within agencies to effect real, cross-agency change.
•
Develop Systematic Gap-Mapping Capacity
. Agencies should develop the capacity to
systematically compare their grantmaking portfolios against the landscape of unsolved
scientific and technical challenges in their domains, rather than relying primarily on
historical funding patterns. In collaboration with industry, academia, and philanthropy,
agencies should maintain “gap maps” that identify unmet needs, duplicated efforts, and
emerging opportunities. Gap maps should directly inform portfolio construction, helping
agencies select appropriate funding mechanisms and institutional models to target the most
important and neglected gaps.
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•
Build Data Infrastructure for Metascience
. Agencies should develop purpose-built data
infrastructure for metascience, including systems that integrate application-level data,
reviewer behavior and scoring, and links between awards and downstream outcomes.
These systems should support longitudinal tracking for both awardees and near-miss
applicants. Agencies should assess workforce and contracting operations for software
engineers and data scientists with the skills to build and maintain these systems as a core
institutional capability.
•
Elevate and Empower Agency Program Officers
. The effectiveness of Federal R&D
funding depends heavily on agencies’ ability to recruit exceptional program officers and
give them genuine discretion to define technical problems, build a research portfolio, and
manage toward ambitious outcomes. Agencies should consider approaches for recruiting
top scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists into time-limited public service
and raising their prestige, visibility, and authority. Agencies should also assess options for
reducing barriers to hiring program officers from non-traditional backgrounds, expanding
rotational mechanisms such as the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, and developing
competitive compensation and career pathways that make program management a career-
enhancing opportunity for top scientific talent. Agencies should also develop or enforce
mechanisms to ensure that conflict of interest policies are strictly followed for all
employees involved in funding recommendations and decisions.
•
Reduce Administrative Burdens.
Agencies should reduce administrative burdens in the
grantmaking and research process to maximize the impact of taxpayer-funded science. This
includes clarifying requirements for the research community and eliminating
overcompliance beyond what Federal regulations and statutes require. Agencies should
consider proposals to coordinate to harmonize and standardize grant requirements, forms,
and submission processes to the greatest extent possible, and carefully weigh any
incremental gains in oversight from new requirements or regulations against the cumulative
burden they impose on researchers. Agencies should also consider options for easing
administrative and regulatory burdens on Federal technology transfer to increase private-
sector investment in R&D.
4. Integrate Federal R&D into Broader S&T Enterprise
Federal R&D is one part of a far larger national S&T enterprise that spans private industry,
academia, state and local governments, and the regional economies in which discovery is translated
into production. To maximize the return on Federal investment, agencies should more deliberately
integrate their R&D with this broader enterprise. This means looking for opportunities to expand
the use of non-Federal cost share, so that Federal dollars draw in and are amplified by private and
other non-Federal investment rather than standing alone. It also means coordination between
Federal R&D and non-R&D investments to support the growth of regional innovation ecosystems
and domestic manufacturing hubs consistent with statutory purposes.
•
Drive Greater Integration of Foundational and Applied Research
. In many frontier
technologies, scientific discovery, engineering, and manufacturing R&D are not sequential
but iterative and tightly coupled. Where appropriate, agencies should propose funding
consortia and partnerships that integrate basic research with manufacturing R&D,
reflecting the multidisciplinary, engineering-intensive way science is conducted today.
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Agency funding in this area should ensure the pursuit of long-term research agendas in
partnership with industry, employment of career scientists, engineers, and technicians,
publication of foundational discoveries as public goods while licensing specific process
innovations, and co-locate with manufacturing facilities and testbeds. Agencies should
explore how such institutions can provide durable infrastructure to anchor place-based
innovation ecosystems aligned with a region’s economic strength.
•
Expand the Use of Non-Federal Cost Share
. Federal R&D funding is most effective
when it catalyzes, rather than substitutes for, private and non-Federal investment. Agencies
should structure funding opportunities, within existing resources, to prioritize support for
initiatives that incorporate meaningful non-government cost share from industry,
philanthropy, State and local governments, or international partners. Cost-share
arrangements signal market validation, accelerate translation, distribute risk, and extend
the impact of taxpayer-funded research. These arrangements should draw on the deep
domain expertise external funders have built in particular sub-fields and leverage their
networks to identify exceptional grant opportunities. Agencies should review existing
authorities for cost-shared R&D, including cooperative agreements, public-private
partnerships, consortia models, and other transaction authorities where applicable, and
propose expansions where statutory or regulatory barriers can be addressed.
•
Integrate Federal R&D with Non-R&D Investments to Support Regional Ecosystems
.
The impact of Federal R&D depends critically on the surrounding ecosystem, including
the workforce, infrastructure, capital, supply chains, and institutions that translate
discovery into economic growth. Agencies should coordinate R&D investments with
Federal non-R&D investments, including in workforce and education, economic
development, infrastructure, small business support, manufacturing extension, and
procurement, to strengthen regional innovation ecosystems and ensure that the benefits of
Federal science are broadly distributed across American communities, particularly where
doing so would accelerate industry-specific R&D anchored in a region’s area of expertise.
Agencies should coordinate across the Federal Government, including through OMB, the
NSTC, and agency-to-agency agreements where helpful, to identify opportunities to co-
locate, sequence, or jointly award R&D and non-R&D resources in support of place-based
strategies and ensure complementary Federal investments in a given region.
•
Integrate Industry in Workforce Training
. S&T workforce programs should maximize
collaboration with the private sector, which increasingly leads both basic and applied R&D,
holds unique scientific instrumentation, data, and computing resources, and can recruit the
best science and engineering talent in ways no university can match. Where practicable,
agencies should partner with industry to attract stronger applicants and amplify Federal
investments, including through industry co-funding (
e.g.,
tuition, stipends, and portable
research funding), paid internship placements, access to research infrastructure, curriculum
development, and expert mentorship.
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IMPLEMENTATION
To address the budget formulation priorities set forth in the “FY 2028 R&D Priority Areas” section
of this memorandum, agencies should follow the standard process for FY2028 budget submission
to OMB.
In addition, within 90 days of this memorandum, the head of each agency with $3 billion or more
in FY 2026 budget authority for R&D shall submit to the Assistant to the President for Science
and Technology (APST) and Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB Director)
an action plan describing how the agency intends to implement the program implementation
guidance set forth in the “R&D Priority Practices” section of this memorandum. Agency action
plans should identify how program execution of their FY2026 and FY2027 budgets can support
these priority practices. Budget formulation matters addressed by this memorandum are outside
the scope of action plans and should instead be reflected in agency FY 2028 budget submissions
to OMB. Each action plan shall identify specific actions to address each R&D priority practice
(e.g., new funding opportunities, program solicitations, pilot initiatives, statements to the research
community, internal organizational changes), implementation timelines, and the offices
responsible. OSTP and OMB will coordinate implementation of these action plans and issue
supplementary guidance as appropriate.
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