Increase Infrastructure Spending

The National Science Board, noting that over the past decade “funding for academic research infrastructure has not kept pace with rapidly changing technology, expanding research opportunities, and increasing numbers of users,” has recommended that NSF significantly increase its infrastructure spending. “The current 22% of the NSF budget devoted to infrastructure is too low and should be increased,” the NSB said in a new report, Science and Engineering Infrastructure for the 21st Century: The Role of the National Science Foundation.

The NSB panel, chaired by University of Arkansas Chancellor John White, said in the report that NSF’s first priority should be developing and deploying “an advanced cyberinfrastructure,” followed by increasing support for large facilities. NSF’s current large facilities annual budget is about $139 million, which supports projects such as the Large Hadron Collider, the South Pole Station, and the terascale computing program. The science board recommends that “an annual investment of at least $350 million is needed over several years just to address the backlog of facility projects construction” under NSF’s jurisdiction.

The report also calls for increasing funding for midsized projects that fall “between the millions and tens of millions of dollars.” More money should go to developing advanced instrument technologies and expanding education and training at research facilities. “The challenge,” the report concludes, “is how to maintain and revitalize an academic research infrastructure that has eroded over many years due to obsolescence and chronic underinvestment.”