National Science Foundation Establishes New Directorate

This week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the establishment of the new Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP). NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said of the new directorate, “NSF’s TIP Directorate will accelerate discovery and innovation to rapidly bring new technologies to market and address the most pressing societal and economic challenges of our time. By pursuing new approaches that engage the nation’s broad and diverse population in shaping research directions and outcomes, TIP will be a game-changer in terms of the pace of technological breakthroughs, future job growth and national competitiveness. We at NSF are grateful for the continued strong support from the Administration and Congress that has made this possibility a reality. We look forward to the passage of the Bipartisan Innovation Act, which will be the next critical step in ensuring TIP can generate a transformational evolution in translating America’s research to expand our economic leadership in the technologies of the future.” A link to the new directorate can be found here.

Even though Congress approved this new directorate in the recently passed and enacted FY2022 Omnibus Appropriations legislation, the actual mission of the directorate has yet to be determined. Provisions to establish the directorate can be found in the House-passed America COMPETES Act of 2022 (H.R. 4521) and the Senate-passed U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 (S. 1260). For more information about this new directorate, please see a recent article from the AIP Newsletter, “NSF Stands Up Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnership.”