Tara Hudiburg worries that she may be “out of her league” in vying for the most lucrative competitive grant the National Science Foundation (NSF) has ever awarded. But the forest ecologist at the University of Idaho may be underestimating herself. Last month her team’s proposal to build a “smart climate economy” in the five-state Columbia River basin was chosen as one of 34 semifinalists for NSF’s first five Regional Innovation Engine (RIE) grants to be awarded this fall.
The $160 million Engine grants are the flagship initiative of NSF’s new technology directorate. They are designed to broaden the agency’s traditional focus on fundamental research to include turning discoveries into new industries and training workers for the resulting high-tech jobs. The Engines are also supposed to improve economic conditions in what NSF describes as “those regions of America that have not fully participated in the technology boom of the past several decades.”
Many lawmakers believe that NSF hasn’t done enough to address those disparities, pointing out that five states receive almost 40% of its research dollars. So Congress will be watching closely to see whether the agency does a better job of spreading the wealth with this first cohort of winners. Hoping to reassure lawmakers, NSF opted for maximum transparency by identifying the semifinalists, a sharp break from tradition for proposals that are still under review.
Some applicants fear it isn’t going far enough. For 4 decades NSF has run a program, called EPSCoR (Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), designed to help smaller and more rural states boost their research capacity. But institutions in EPSCoR states such as Idaho are leads for only eight—fewer than one-quarter—of the RIE semifinalists, whose proposals span 14 topical areas ranging from agriculture to sustainable energy to wellness. That means Hudiburg’s Idaho team, which includes two tribal nations and a community college, must also compete against 26 proposals from 14 non-EPSCoR states, many led by top 20 research universities and major academic medical centers with large companies as partners.
One is headed by the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic and includes two major research universities, area hospitals, and Medtronic, a global leader in medical devices and therapeutics. That team proposes to build and operate a comprehensive digital platform to improve health care outcomes in the Cleveland and Detroit areas. Although neither Ohio nor Michigan are EPSCoR states, neurologist Lara Jehi, the clinic’s chief research information officer and co-leader on the proposal, notes that “Ohio and Michigan are among the worst nationally for health equity.”
But some contenders believe that having such juggernauts vie for the prize isn’t consistent with the goals of the program. “The idea is not to award more money to wealthy cities for work that they're already doing,” says Michaele Armstrong, associate director of a regional hub for biotech startups at Washington State University that is part of the Idaho proposal. “Instead, an NSF Engine is supposed to help mobilize technologies or communities that have been left behind.”
Some EPSCoR states contending for an NSF Engine are also home to well-resourced research institutions. A semifinalist team led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), whose research portfolio ranks in the top 5% nationally, wants to use biotechnology to drive innovation and reduce health inequities plaguing the region’s sizable Black population. UAB hopes to do that by partnering with some of the 14 historically Black colleges and universities in the state.
“Alabama has the largest number of HBCUs in the country, and we also have a strong track record of recruiting minority patients in clinical trials,” says Kathy Nugent, a biotech entrepreneur who oversees commercialization efforts at UAB and is leading the team. “But reducing health inequities is a hard problem, and the validation and visibility that comes with winning an NSF Engine would really help.”
Another EPSCoR-state semifinalist, based at Louisiana State University (LSU), aims to address another urgent societal problem: the massive carbon footprint of the state’s oil, gas, and chemical industry. “If we can figure out a cheap energy source, whether that's solar, nuclear, or wind, and then find a way to use its energy to transport and sequester our greenhouse gas emissions, we can essentially still be home to a very hydrocarbon intense industry,” says Andy Maas, director of LSU’s office of innovation and commercialization who leads the team.
NSF expects the winning teams to also attract significant funding from both the public and private sectors. LSU should have no trouble satisfying that goal, Maas says: The big oil companies have announced some $27 billion in new low-carbon projects, he notes, and New Orleans recently won $50 million in federal infrastructure funding to pursue green hydrogen.
At the core of every proposal is a plan to carry out and commercialize the research conducted by the team, then train a local workforce needed for the relevant business sector to thrive. Typically, commercialization involves helping a faculty member start a company or license their intellectual property. But a semifinalist based at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)—in a state not eligible for EPSCoR—is proposing a new model that will allow small and medium-size companies in the aerospace and defense sector to order up the advances they need to prosper.
“Most of those companies cannot afford the innovation that comes from a major university or a big corporate lab,” says Ahsan Choudhuri, a UTEP aerospace engineer who leads the team. “So we’re offering innovation as a service. We’ll provide them with the infrastructure, talent, and innovation to rebuild America's defense industrial base.” He calls it “a very grassroots approach.”
Every Engine proposal must also include plans to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the U.S. research enterprise. That could be a challenge in states, such as Texas, which have ordered universities to roll back or shutter such efforts. But like the other semifinalists from such states who spoke with Science, Choudhuri does not anticipate any problem in satisfying that requirement.
“DEI is in our DNA,” Choudhuri says, citing the ethnic and gender diversity of his leadership team. “Hispanics make up 80% of our community, so we don't have to set up an office to ensure diversity. By supporting us, you are helping to solve the problem.”
NSF chose the first round of semifinalists from 188 proposals and will winnow the list further after site visits. Each of the five winners will receive $15 million for 2 years, with the promise of $145 million more over the decade. (The number and size of subsequent cohorts will depend on the agency’s future overall budget.)
Hudiburg hopes to be one of the winners. But she won’t think of herself as a loser if her team’s proposal comes up short.
“The connections we’ve made are permanent,” she says. “We have a dream, and if we don’t get an NSF engine, we’ll keep looking for other funding. Because the atmosphere can’t wait.”
