Trump administration to shift R&D funding from academia to individual scientists

The Trump administration announced it plans to shift some of the $200 billion in annual funding for research and development away from academic institutions to focus on individual scientists.

In a memo released Tuesday, Michael Kratisos, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, argued the framework put forth following World War II around research and science development and its funding no longer suits the growing role of industry and engineering.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the memo.

“To reverse stagnation and restore breakthrough momentum, the federal government must free American scientists to do their best work,” Kratsios wrote.

While pulling away from large universities, Kratsios called for more of an emphasis on certain graduate fellowships like those offered by the National Science Foundation, along with scaling certain grants and offering alternative pathways beyond academia.

Kratsios argued researchers now spent half their time on paper work or administrative tasks, which is “worsened by expanding federal and university bureaucracies that further reduce funding available for actual science.”

“Federal funding in academia remains anchored to mid-century assumptions,” Kratsios added, pointing to challenges in the science space like the slowing of new biomedical breakthroughs or flatlined drug approvals.

As part of this transition, Kratsios argues institutions must also be implementing artificial intelligence into their workflows, which he said were “built for human-based discovery.”

This includes maintaining the government’s partnerships with private companies that have the compute and engineering teams to test and operate frontier AI models.

Kratsios stressed how AI will speed up scientific processes, but other mechanisms like the speed of feedback, atoms and institutional mechanisms must be reformed first.

The Trump administration has rolled out various initiatives over the past 18 months to boost AI and other science developments like quantum.

This includes through the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, which launched in February to boost public-private partnership. The consortium has a lengthy list of goals including the development of supercomputers and building up a stronger computing capability by 2028.

Kratsios also announced on Tuesday that the U.S. will spend about $5 billion for the Genesis Mission for agencies to identify the causes of long-standing problems like chronic diseases or finding a cure for pediatric cancer.

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