NSF’s Role

NSF provides the funding that sustains many research fields as advances in these fields expand the boundaries of knowledge. Equally important, the agency provides seed capital to catalyze emerging opportunities in research and education. It supports a portfolio of investments that reflects the interdependence among fields, promoting disciplinary strength while embracing interdisciplinary activities. Its investments promote the emergence of new disciplines, fields, and technologies.

Academic institutions, working in partnership with the public and private sectors, are crucibles for expanding the frontiers of science and engineering knowledge, and educating the next generation of scientists and engineers. Consequently, NSF plays a critical role in supporting fundamental research and education at colleges and universities throughout the country.

NSF does not operate laboratories, but instead brings together diverse elements of the larger science and engineering community to achieve our mission. This places the agency in a unique position to provide leadership, working with its partners to chart new paths for research and education. In this leadership role, NSF fosters strategic collaborations with key national and international counterparts that address global science and engineering priorities and promote the betterment of humankind.

NSF coordinates agency plans with the activities of other Federal agencies, creating partnerships when there are shared interests and taking complementary approaches where appropriate. Senior managers at NSF and other agencies maintain the close connections that provide a productive framework for program-level coordination and permit formal cooperation among agencies.

Given the extraordinary importance of science and technology at the dawn of the 21st century, there is a growing need for timely, accurate, relevant information on the status of the domestic and foreign science and engineering enterprise that informs science policy and priority setting.

The National Science Board has been responsible, by law, for developing on a biennial basis a report "…on indicators of the state of science and engineering in the United States." This report, which the Board submits to the President for transmission to Congress, provides not only a domestic perspective, but international comparisons as well. It serves as a basis for decision-making on major policy issues related to science and engineering.