A Look Into the NSF’s New Directorate

Authorized by the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act, which became law in August 2022, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) last year created a new organization called the Technology Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate.

From the outset, TIP was designed to behave differently from other NSF organizations, explained Erwin Gianchandani, assistant director, Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, U.S. National Science Foundation, speaking with Charles Clancy, senior vice president and chief technology officer, The MITRE Corporation, and general manager of MITRE Labs, on March 12 at the inaugural AFCEA International TechNet Emergence conference held in Reston, Virginia, March 11-12.

The directorate’s mission is to advance research and development, technology development and related solutions that address U.S. issues and challenges for the benefit of all Americans. This goes beyond a single mission area such as defense, Gianchandani said. And the assistant director clarified that TIP was not created just to be another entity such as Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or the intelligence community equivalent, IARPA.

The directorate, under the NSF’s Engines Program, will support multiple regional innovation ecosystems across the United States to spur economic growth and flourish innovation, especially in regions that may not have seen the technology boom experienced in other areas over the past few decades. Across the country, it will award grants that support “transformational advances” in critical technologies such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, advanced wireless and biotechnology.

Part of the new directorate’s charge is to develop “mutually beneficial” R&D partnerships across academia, nonprofit organizations, labor organizations, for-profit entities, government entities and international entities.

TIP will encourage the translation of research into innovations, processes and products that feed into the American economy, Gianchandani said. This means focusing on pressing challenges.

“The end goal of this effort is to really be able to advance key technologies to be able to address some of our pressing societal and geostrategic challenges, and also, to grow the workforce,” Gianchandani explained. “And those aspirations hold true from a national level.”

See the article here.

Source: AFCEA Signal

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