Scientists Concerned About Change to NSF GRFP Solicitation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has updated the guidance for its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) by announcing three high priority research areas for 2021: artificial intelligence, quantum information science, and computationally intensive research. The updated program solicitation encourages applications in “all disciplines supported by NSF that incorporate these high priority research areas.” According to a report by Nature, some NSF-watchers worry that this update to emphasize research in applied computational science will significantly limit funding for fundamental science, particularly since NSF is the major US agency which has a mandate to promote and support all basic scientific research. Kelsey Lucas, a marine and aquatic comparative biomechanist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a former GRFP recipient, argues that the concentration of funding in certain fields without expanding the program means that other areas, including basic science, will get less funding. “These are focus areas that are already, right now, very well-funded,” said Michael Hoffman, a computational biologist at the University of Toronto, who received the fellowship in 2003. Hoffman argues that the strength of the GRFP is that it trains scientists across a broad range of disciplines that are not typically funded by other agencies. And that is critical because “you can never predict which areas are going to have the really important ...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news