White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation

[dalton99a]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/02/white-house-budget-proposal-could-shatter-the-national-science-foundation/

White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation
"This kind of cut would kill American science and boost China."
Eric Berger – Feb 6, 2025 4:38 PM

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During an emotional all-hands meeting on Tuesday, the agency's assistant director for engineering, Susan Margulies, told agency employees to expect between a quarter and a half of its staff to be laid off within the coming months, E&E News reported.

On Thursday, two sources told Ars that the science agency should expect to see steep cuts in Trump's forthcoming budget request. In recent years, the National Science Foundation has received an annual budget of approximately $9 billion, the vast majority of which is spent on research and research-related activities. The cuts could be as deep as 66 percent, with one person indicating the top-line budget number for the National Science Foundation could start at $3 billion.

"This kind of cut would kill American science and boost China and other nations into global science leadership positions," Neal Lane, who led the National Science Foundation in the 1990s during Bill Clinton's presidency, told Ars. "The National Science Foundation budget is not large, of the order 0.1 percent of federal spending, and several other agencies support excellence research. But NSF is the only agency charged to promote progress in science."

The National Science Foundation was established by Congress in 1950 to fund basic research that would ultimately advance national health and prosperity, and secure the national defense. Its major purpose is to evaluate proposals and distribute funding for basic scientific research. Alongside the National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy, it has been an engine of basic discovery that has led to the technological superiority of the United States government and its industries.

Some fields, including astronomy, non-health-related biology, and Antarctic research, are all almost entirely underwritten by the National Science Foundation. The primary areas of its funding can be found here.

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https://new.nsf.gov/impacts#brought-to-you-by-nsf-467

Innovations and discoveries made possible through NSF support:

The internet
Drawing on DARPA's pioneering support for early computer networking projects, NSF funding catalyzed the creation of today's internet.

DNA amplification
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3D printing
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Doppler radar
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American Sign Language
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Detecting gravitational waves
Opened in 1999, NSF LIGO was the first to detect gravitational waves: ripples in space-time.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
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Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
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CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA
The tools that keep badly behaving bots from taking over the internet were invented by NSF-funded researchers.

Kidney matching
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Seeing black holes
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Duolingo
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Deep-ocean exploration
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Learning beyond the classroom
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