U.S. National Science Foundation: Functions, Funding & Programs

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) primary responsibility is to maintain the health and vitality of the U.S. academic science and engineering enterprise. In addition to ensuring the nation’s supply of scientific and engineering personnel, the NSF promotes academic basic research and science and engineering education across many disciplines. The NSF provides support for investigator-initiated, merit-reviewed, competitively selected awards, state-of-the-art tools, instrumentation, and facilities. NSF receives approximately 45,000 proposals for research, graduate, and postdoctoral fellowships, and science, mathematics, and engineering projects annually, and makes about 11,500 new funding awards. Support is provided to academic institutions, industrial laboratories, private research firms, and major research facilities and centres. This book provides an overview of the funding issues, functions and programs relating to the U.S. National Science Foundation, with a focus on STEM education funding; EPSCoR; performance and financial highlights.