NSF cuts core research budgets to fund a new tech initiative
The National Science Foundation is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic-science programs by 20% to 30% or more, even though the agency’s overall budget is down only about 3%, according to reporting by Science and Nature . Insiders say the reductions are meant to free money for a new $1.5 billion initiative, launched last month, that funds independent teams of researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs to turn discoveries into products and new industries.
An internal memo told program managers in a unit of the math and physical sciences directorate that their budget for the fiscal year ending September 30 had been cut 30% from the prior year. The same memo instructed managers to pull back pending award recommendations and to refrain from telling principal investigators about the changes.
The scale of the cuts appears to conflict with a directive in the final FY2026 appropriations bill barring any NSF directorate from taking more than a 5% reduction relative to the FY2024 enacted level. Redirecting the agency’s core grant-making toward a single applied-technology program shifts NSF away from the investigator-initiated basic research it has long anchored, and the instruction to withhold recommended awards means fewer new grants will reach university labs this year — with the possibility of a congressional or legal challenge over the appropriations language.