NSF Announces More Than $1.5 Billion in New Opportunities for Foundational Research
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced 12 new funding opportunities representing more than $1.5 billion in support for foundational research across science and engineering. The opportunities are intended to advance ambitious, long-term research while also providing mechanisms for researchers to rapidly explore promising new ideas.
Announced in August 2026, the funding opportunities span fields ranging from computing and engineering to biology, mathematics, materials science, physics, chemistry, geosciences, and astronomy. Collectively, they reinforce NSF's emphasis on fundamental research capable of producing scientific breakthroughs, opening new areas of inquiry, and ultimately contributing to technological innovation.
Several of the opportunities are particularly relevant to researchers working in cyber-physical systems (CPS) and related areas of computing and engineering. NSF's Expeditions in Computing program supports ambitious foundational research intended to shape the future of computing and information, while the Electrical, Communications, and Computing Systems (ECCS) opportunity supports fundamental work involving electrical, communications, and computing technologies.
Additional opportunities through NSF's Engineering Directorate encompass areas where computation increasingly intersects with physical systems. The Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) opportunity supports foundational work in civil, mechanical, and manufacturing research, while Chemical, Bioengineering, Energy and Transport Systems (CBET) covers fundamental engineering research involving energy and transportation as well as chemical and biological systems.
NSF is also seeking transformative research into new computing paradigms. An Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation opportunity focuses on wave-based computing, supporting research into computing approaches that take advantage of the principles of wave dynamics. Such investigations could contribute to fundamentally different ways of designing and implementing future computing technologies.
Beyond these computing and engineering programs, NSF's newly listed opportunities support foundational research across biological sciences, geosciences, mathematics, materials, physics, chemistry, and astronomy. This broad portfolio reflects the agency's goal of supporting discoveries throughout the scientific enterprise rather than limiting investment to technologies with immediate applications.
NSF notes that foundational research has played an important role in U.S. technological progress for more than 75 years. Investments in fundamental science and engineering can take years to reach practical application, but they have historically provided the knowledge on which new technologies and industries are built. NSF connects these investments with broader goals that include strengthening economic competitiveness, supporting national security, and improving quality of life.
For the CPS research community, the new opportunities provide multiple avenues for pursuing the fundamental questions underlying increasingly interconnected computational and physical technologies—from future computing and communications architectures to transportation, energy, manufacturing, and other engineered systems.
Source: This article is based on information published by the U.S. National Science Foundation regarding its August 2026 Notices of Funding Opportunity for Foundational Research. Read the NSF announcement and explore the individual funding opportunities here: https://www.nsf.gov/news/foundational-research-nofos