Team Science needs Teamwork: Universities should get in on the ground floor in shaping the vision for new NSF Tech Labs
It has been 10 years since the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) published its 2015 consensus report on Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science, recognizing then that the growing trend toward collaborative and team-based research required guidance on organizational and funding structures, leadership, and team composition. In the decade that followed, the U.S. scientific enterprise experimented with different models for delivering on the promise of “team science”—from university-based centers to new mission-focused government agencies (e.g. ARPAs) to more recently Focused Research Organizations (FROs). Each approach has converged on both the challenge and the opportunity—that team-based science is a critical engine of discovery for complex national problems—but its success depends far more on incentives, leadership, governance, and institutional reward systems than on scientific talent alone.
Today, the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced its plan for an ambitious pilot “Tech Labs program,” a $10 to 50M per year initiative designed to harness a team-based approach to tackle national scientific priorities, such as quantum technology, artificial intelligence, critical materials, semiconductor manufacturing, and biotechnology. Though we now have multiple examples of philanthropic and venture capital-funded entities, NSF’s Tech Labs will be the first predominantly federally funded entity, similar to a Focused Research Organization (FRO), structured to harness foundational science in high leverage teams in ‘independent organizations’ to execute on outcomes-based initiatives aligned with a federal science agenda. This initiative promises to fill a critical gap in the federal science and innovation ecosystem, making a space for rapid, high-risk, system-level capabilities that could prove foundational in building national technical capabilities—things that markets, universities, and philanthropy cannot do on their own. The Federation of American Scientists applauds this significant milestone for the U.S. scientific enterprise, but also offers several considerations to ensure that diverse scientific talent, from universities and the private sector, can fully see themselves in this emerging vision.
A central feature for NSF-funded Tech Labs is that they must be “independent,” meaning that they must have organizational and operational autonomy, as well as the freedom to act outside of academic or corporate constraints. This is an intentional design feature that ensures teams can operate like a mission-driven applied R&D organization, with their own authority, hiring, IP strategy, and operational systems. Universities have a key role to play. They can serve as a key source of ideas, facilities, personnel, and future talent, but their ingrained “publish or perish” culture and the existing incentive structure for tenure and promotion may systematically limit participation of university faculty and students in a potential NSF Tech Lab project. At a time when universities are already facing intense pressure to re-envision their role in the science and technology (S&T) ecosystem, we encourage both universities and the NSF to take steps to ensure complementarity and co-benefit, providing pathways for ambitious research acceleration that can leverage expertise and infrastructure that universities can contribute. We offer the following ideas to consider:
Create Intentional Pathways for Talent Mobility between Universities and Tech Labs
- Students. Tech Labs could become a rich training ground for future scientists and entrepreneurs and students could become critical components of “portable research teams.” For example, graduate students and postdocs could be embedded full-time at a Tech Lab but tuition could still flow to the university and salaries be co-funded. Joint deliverables could include academic publications and also milestone-based efforts that align with research goals.
- Faculty. Similar to the NSF Rotator model, consider the creation of a short-term appointment category (e.g. “Tech Lab Program Scientist”) that creates a hybrid tour-of-service model for tenured faculty to participate in a Tech Lab team.
Align financial incentives and share critical infrastructure
Independent NSF Tech Labs could develop milestone-based, block grant, subcontracts to university labs to leverage the use of critical equipment and physical space. This will help reduce administrative burden to universities and counter potential loss of indirect expenses.
With the comment period that opens today, NSF is inviting broad stakeholder input into this ambitious vision. This launch of the first federally funded FRO could mark a transformational moment for the U.S. science enterprise, changing what kinds of science and engineering become possible at all and enabling the execution of innovation at scale. But success will depend on broad buy-in and willingness to test this model. Please share your thoughts by January 20th about how to set this bold experiment up to deliver on the decade-long promise of “team science” and set the scientific research enterprise up to embark on a new era of innovation.
FAS CEO Daniel Correa recently spoke with Adam Marblestone and Sam Rodriques, former FAS fellows who developed the idea for FROs and advocated for their use in a 2020 policy memo.
Create new FROs to tackle scientific and technological challenges that can’t be efficiently addressed by existing organizational structures.