OPINION — “The use cases that help to drive the research agenda can come from a variety of different settings…We need to acknowledge that it's okay for those use cases to come from the Department of War (DoW) and Intelligence Community (IC). It's our responsibility to be able to help put the best minds here in the U.S., the best talent here in the U.S., to help unlock some of that research and innovation. And then it's up to our colleagues at DoW and the IC, whom we collaborate with, to harness some of those outputs for the betterment of our national interests and our national needs.”
That was Erwin Gianchandani, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director of the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIPS), speaking last Friday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies during a meeting on NSF's National Security Mission for the Twenty-First Century.
TIPS is an NSF program that invests in use-inspired research and the translation of those research results to the market to continue to keep society and the nation secure.
Ironically, I had listened to Gianchandani’s remarks last Friday before reading the outline of President Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request with its gigantic increase for Defense Department (DoD) spending – to near $1.5 trillion. Much to my surprise, not only was federal research and development cut in that request for next year, but NSF’s own next year’s budget was cut from $8.8 billion to $4 billion.
Before I talk about what’s interesting about NSF’s TIPS program, I want to make a few observations about the proposed 2027 DoD budget request, which represents a 44 percent increase over this year’s spending.
In a letter accompanying the budget outline, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell T. Vought said that in addition to the $1.1 trillion base DoW budget, Trump is including “a request for $350 billion in additional mandatory resources for critical Administration priorities such as increasing access to critical munitions and further expansion of the defense industrial base.”
This vast Trump federal growth of U.S. military spending seems very similar to what Russian President Vladimir Putin has done to the Russian government’s economic base, putting it on a wartime footing to meet the needs of his four-year Ukraine war.
I will also point out there is a $3.6 billion increase for the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA), which runs the nation’s nuclear weapons program. Budget Director Vought wrote, “The United States must maintain and expand its set of nuclear capabilities that allow the President flexibility to protect the homeland and deter adversaries. Specifically, the Budget makes strong investments to develop new [nuclear] warheads that would bolster deterrence, modernize NNSA’s supporting infrastructure, and extend the life of existing warheads.”
The U.S. has already been building new warheads for its new submarine-launched cruise missile and its new land-based intercontinental ballistic missile [Sentinel]. There is also a new nuclear air-launched cruise missile on the way. What other new warheads does this country need “to develop”?
Need I also mention there’s an additional $18 billion for Trump’s Golden Dome dream of a missile defense system to feature space-based interceptors, plus unstated amounts for his un-needed Trump battleships.
I want to focus back on the NSF’s TIPS program because Assistant Director Gianchandani described changes in the academic research world worth recording.
For example, he reminded that China’s “President Xi has said that science and technology is the new international battlefield. It is the vehicle by which the international battlefield is going to be shaped going forward…We cannot take that lightly,” Gianchandani said , adding, “If we are going to ensure our competitiveness, our security, our defense, we have to take that very seriously. And that means that there are going to be instances a lot of the technology that we are surfacing and that we are enabling are dual-use [for war and/or peace] technologies.”
Gianchandani said it still takes years for basic science to be unlocked but that “every sector of our economy really is being transformed by the introduction of data and AI [Artificial Intelligence] -- that is the new currency of scientific progress and in that context I think the pace of discovery and innovation is greatly accelerated.”
He also pointed out changes in academia.
“It used to be that in certain fields the majority of PhDs would go into academia,” Gianchandani said. He continued, “Today the majority of PhDs in those same fields are going anywhere but academia. Nothing against our higher education institutions, but the types of jobs that we are training for, the types of opportunities that we are trying to unlock, span from the Department of Defense to the Intelligence Community to the private sector to venture capital and so forth.”
Gianchandani also spoke about what he termed “our early-career faculty,” who “are saying, you know, we want to have impact with the work that we're trying to do…And for them, impact at the end of the day isn't necessarily about papers and publications. It's about the startups that they can create. It's about the ecosystem that they can cultivate. It's about these partnerships with industry and seeing their ideas over time make their way into products and services that are changing people's lives or that are for the betterment of the U.S. defense and intelligence enterprises. That's early-career faculty who are up and coming who are trying to see that happen.”
Gianchandani also explained that TIPS wanted to change that linear pathway between basic science and needs in the real world.
As he described it, “You start with just simply use discovery science, you let the great flowers bloom, and then you harness that, but we want to complement that…with also what are the real world use cases from Department of War (DoW) , the Intelligence Community (IC) etc. That can help to inform and shape some of that use-inspired research, some of that translational research, and accelerate that to actually have impact at the end of the day.”
One TIPS program he cited was “our ability to be successful tied to critical minerals.” NSF did a technical assessment and found, “it turns out that by the year 2030 about a quarter -- several data sets have shown this – about a quarter of the nation's critical minerals needs could be addressed through the harnessing of end-of-life critical minerals -- waste stream critical minerals and so forth,” Gianchandani said.
That became the basis for TIPS’ Tech Metal Transformation Challenge whose grant winners demonstrated their capability to create solutions to solve the hardest technical gaps in critical materials recovery, gaps that directly impacted U.S. manufacturing competitiveness and national security.
“If we're going to think about the equipment that you need for hypersonics and the ability to do ground and air scanning, in real time, you're going to need those critical mineral assets,” Gianchandani said, adding, “And so being able to leverage this type of an approach and surfacing the teams that can potentially do so in a rapid manner and in a in a sort of a different way than we might traditionally do through some of our normal processes. I think allows us to be able to ensure that we are maintaining that competitiveness.”
For four years, TIPS has been running a Regional Innovation Engines Program providing the largest investments that the agency makes in terms of R&D and workforce development.
Gianchandani said, “We funded an engine in central Florida in Osceola County, Florida, that increasingly now covers more and more of the state with a particular focus on semiconductor technologies and specifically advanced packaging capabilities.”
Within weeks, he said, “there was an announcement that the Department of War was also investing in that same ecosystem in that same team. So that shows you sort of the symbiosis between our investments and that of our colleagues elsewhere in the government.”
That engine, he continued, “Brought together Valencia Community College. They've brought together their backyard secret sauce, which is the only municipal-owned fab [a semiconductor fabricating plant] in this country to our knowledge, operated by SkyWater Technology [a semiconductor manufacturer]. That particular setup has allowed them to be able to reskill, upskill, the workforce in Osceola County to the point that folks were making minimum wage and
six months later they're making three or four times as much, which has huge implications on their livelihoods [and] has huge implications on their ability to put food on the table for their families and oh by the way it's also a job that they're really excited about working in these semiconductor fabs. So that's one example.”
Overall, Gianchandani said, “Engines across the board, an [original NSF] investment of $135 million over the last two years has been matched by over a $1.5 billion in matching commitments from state and local governments, private industry, venture capital, and so forth. And they've touched at least 20,000 Americans. That's a floor, probably much more than that, but at least 20,000 Americans with re-skilling and upskilling.”
Gianchandani closed with a statement worth thinking about: “The pace of science is changing before our very eyes. It is greatly accelerating. And as that pace accelerates, that also means that going from basic discovery to an innovation to thinking about a new capability…The rate at which we're making progress is changing. And so it's important for us to be acknowledging that, and it's important for us to be thinking about science sort as a front and center vehicle that allows us to be able to keep that cutting edge, keep that leadership mantle that I think we want to see for our national defense and for our national prosperity as we go forward.”
I should point out that the Trump administration cut the NSF fiscal 2026 budget request in half from the prior year — to $3.9 billion -- and last year the Members of Congress in their wisdom reinstated it to $8.75 billion. I expect, hope, that ignoring the Trump administration request will happen again.
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