Are we witnessing the irreversible deconstruction of an historically successful NSF program, not because of any clear strategy or planning but instead because of the cumulative impact of many forces?

The National Science Foundation has historically supported a mixture of individual investigator (or small team) funding opportunities and large center grants. The center programs are meant to bring together collaborative teams of researchers to tackle sets of research questions that require a larger scale approach - a hugely emphasized review criterion of those centers is always the question, "Is the proposed work really a center, in the sense of being a coherent effort larger than the sum of its parts, or does it instead read like a collection of loosely connected individual projects?" Center programs are also a way that NSF has supported Research Experience for Undergraduates programs, providing crucial gateways into real science and engineering research and training for hundreds of students per year. Similarly, center programs have contributed toward building up networks of facilities with specialized research infrastructure and capabilities. Apart from topical centers that come and go (e.g., the nano centers in the early 2000s, the quantum centers now), center programs include Engineering Research Centers, Science and Technology Centers, and the less applied Physics Frontier Centers (Division of Physics), Centers for Chemical Innovation (Division of Chemistry), and the flagship center program of the Division of Materials Research, the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs).

The MRSEC program has such a long history (going back to that it has a reasonably good wikipedia page telling the story of its origins and evolution. In brief: There are typically around 20 MRSECs at any one time since the program was shifted into its present form 31 years ago. Each center award is for six years, renewable. There is a national competition every three years, during which half of the existing centers are up for renewal (though depending on reports by visiting committees, some centers may be recommended not to submit a renewal proposal). Research in MRSECs is organized into "Interdisciplinary Research Groups" (IRGs), as well as some seed projects. Once upon a time, a MRSEC could have as many as five IRGs. Over the last 15 years or so, NSF budgets have largely been flat, and DMR has tried to balance the demands of individual investigator grants vs. center grants, along with knowing that underfunding a project can be worse than not funding it at all. As a result, the number of funded IRGs has decreased steadily, so that a typical MRSEC now has two or three IRGs (usually two).

I won’t bore you with details about how the funding competitions work. The short version: universities send in preproposals consisting of draft IRGs + the other center components (facilities, education, management, etc.); IRGs are reviewed in panels, and then universities are invited or not to the full proposal stage. Suffice it to say, every three years there is a national competition that consumes many many hours of effort. Landing a MRSEC is both a sponsored research award and a point of pride. Typically maybe 80% of the cohort up for renewal make it, with new starts making up the balance, so that there is some rotation among institutions. Like all NSF programs, the peer review efforts are done for free by the community.

The MRSEC program has had a big impact over the years, at minimum in the number of people trained and supported through these efforts. The National Research Council/NAS did a study of the MRSEC program back in 2007 that is publicly available here, if you’re interested. No program is perfect, and I don’t want to argue about whether the balance of, e.g., reporting requirements vs. research dollars is right, etc. However, I think the large majority of materials researchers in the US would say that the MRSEC program is a mainstay that has been a key pipeline of people into the field, both in academia and industry.

This year, I worry that we are watching likely irreversible harm to the program, and not by the voluntary choice of anyone at NSF. The budgetary uncertainty is crushing right now. It is unclear when and how the agency will be making awards, and how much funding they will have (since you can’t actually plan based on the possibility of a continuing resolution in the absence of actual budget bills that can pass congress). As a result, after the preproposal phase in the current competition, NSF revised their guidance, so that instead of the typical "8-10 awards" expected (see here), now they say to expect "2-5 awards". That’s because they’re doing contingency planning assuming a cut in the program from $27M to $15M. This means that there is a real possibility that the total number of existing MRSECs could be cut by 40% at a stroke, and the next cycle of the competition will be due to start in 2028, with little reason to think that budgets will be any better or smoother by then.

There will almost certainly never be a return to "normal", for multiple reasons, including the general evolution of all funding programs with time. The end result of the current shakeup may also have some positive outcomes in terms of new approaches. That said, it sure feels like paths are being set by circumstances, not considered choice. I would say that the path of this program is a question that should be addressed by the NSF Math and Physical Sciences advisory committee, but of course that was disbanded back in April, along with 11 others. You might imagine asking the National Academies for thoughts on this, but I gather anecdotally that is not happening much at all anymore either.

I’m writing because I hope someone more influential than me can report on this. At a time when "materials" are clearly of major importance to US competitiveness (e.g., they are clearly relevant to multiple priority areas of the Genesis Mission), is anyone thinking about the impact of the trajectory we are on here?

(Back to science soon, hopefully.)