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...
