Does the research facility you want to build cost upwards of $100 million? Try lobbying Congress or chasing down the big money through NSF’s major-facility awards or the Department of Energy. Need up to a few million dollars for lab equipment? Ask NSF or another funding agency. Those are the standard avenues for funding scientific infrastructure in the US. Until recently, however, scientists had few places to turn for medium-cost infrastructure.
Now NSF seeks to fill that gap with a pair of funding lines. Awards in the smaller midscale research infrastructure category (MidScale RI-1) are available for projects costing from $6 million to $20 million and can encompass design or implementation; the MidScale RI-2 line funds infrastructure costing from $20 million to $100 million. The two programs run in alternate years.
The funding gap had been recognized for a long time. Then in 2017, as part of the American Innovation...
