Trump unveils $5B Genesis Mission AI research grants as White House proposes major science overhaul

White House rolls out AI funding -- and signals a new era for US science

It was a big week for science in the administration of US President Donald Trump. On Tuesday, the president's chief science adviser, Michael Kratsios, release a report called Science: A New Golden Age that proposes substantial changes to federally funded research. The next day saw him help to unveil some of the first winners of research grants from the Genesis Mission, the administration's flagship artificial-intelligence initiative. For the past year and a half, the Republican-led administration has made headlines for attempting to cut funding for US science that it disfavours. This week's events are notable because they move forward the science that it does favour -- in particular, AI. Some 5,000 teams applied for funding from the Genesis Mission, which the administration billed as a programme "comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project" to accelerate US science with AI. At a summit on 22 July, officials announced about 280 winning projects in a first phase of the programme. Teams will apply AI to problems such as improving the US power grid and automating laboratories, and will receive a 9-month grant for between US$500,000 and $750,000. Researchers in these teams can also submit applications for a second phase: a three-year programme involving millions in annual funding. "I was very, very, very happy" to be chosen "because it was incredibly competitive," winner Jeremy Zucker told Nature at the summit. Zucker, a computational scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, is leading a project that will model algal growth in ponds to maximize biofuel production. Kratsios's report got a more mixed reception at a hearing in Washington DC that he attended on the same day. In the report, he calls for shifting US science funding away from "legacy institutions" such as universities. "Too much of our research enterprise has come to serve itself rather than the scientists within it," he wrote. Under this new vision, individual scientists would be supported by programmes such as 'golden tickets', which give grant reviewers the ability to override the decisions of their colleagues to fund high-risk proposals. "We should be testing other ways to make breakthroughs than what we've been doing for so many years," he said at the hearing of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He argued that US science is stagnating and needs to be rethought. Members of the US Congress, who decide what science to fund, had mixed reactions. Republicans on the committee broadly expressed support for Kratsios's vision for US science; Democrats, however, criticized the Trump administration's cuts to science budgets and agencies, as well as its push to take political control of grant awards. "You aren't launching us into 'the golden age of innovation'. You're sending us back to the Stone Age," said Gabe Amo, a Democrat representing Rhode Island. Some scientists have been quick to criticize the report. Carl Bergstrom, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, wrote on the social-media platform Bluesky that the administration seems determined to "destroy" US universities. (Trump and his Republican allies have accused US research institutions of being discriminatory towards conservative views, and the administration has withheld funding from some universities, citing antisemitism.) Grant challenges Lawmakers also questioned Kratsios about media reports, including one from Nature, that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) plans to claw back about $500 million from its grant-making divisions and funnelling the money towards a new White House initiative. Democrat Zoe Lofgren of California queried the chief science adviser about this. He responded: "I'm not familiar with those details. I would refer you to NSF," but made the case that the United States should "be more deliberative and specific about trying to tackle grand challenges". Nature has learnt that the NSF has now pulled back $300 million from two of its divisions: mathematics and physical sciences, and computer and information science and engineering. Programme officers, who handle grant proposals at the NSF, have pulled back 150 proposals that have already passed peer review to free up the money, which was allotted to the agency by the US Congress. Some proposals have been rescinded, others have had funding cuts and still others have been held until the next fiscal year. Staff members at the NSF, who spoke to Nature on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals, say the money is probably going to a programme called Grand Research Challenges, organized by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which Kratsios runs. A preliminary document shown to Nature that appears to outline the challenges lists four areas: the future of intelligence, the frontier of quantum phenomena, advanced materials and matter and the foundations of biological design. A spokesperson for the NSF said that the agency would not comment on internal budget deliberations. They said that funds for research activities in fiscal year 2026 could be awarded that year or the next one, and that "NSF revises budgets and manages portfolios as needed".

U.S. pledges $5 billion to boost AI in government-backed scientific research

I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific American and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy. We leverage third party services to both verify and deliver email. By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. Overall federal funding for scientific research is set to decline in 2027, the most senior White House science figure said on Wednesday. However, the government pledged to spend $5 billion on promoting artificial intelligence (AI) in science. Michael Kratsios, the White House's Science and Technology Advisor, told the House Science, Space and Technology committee that the money will be drawn from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, as well as other federal agencies. The goal is to produce "the premier AI for science ecosystem in the world," he said. The funding will be earmarked for research awards, funding opportunities, specialized scientific datasets and research facilities, the White House said in a statement. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The remarks go some way to help define the Genesis Mission, a White House effort announced in November aimed at promoting U.S. dominance in AI, but at the time had no defined budget. The administration hopes to bolster AI in research conducted by government science agencies, such as NASA and the Department of Energy, Kratsios said. The administration is also interested in funding a "scientifically relevant quantum computer," he added. At the hearing, Kratsios fielded lawmakers' questions about major cuts to NSF grants under the Trump administration. When asked about nearly $1 billion in held up NSF grants, as well as the "very large discrepancies" between planned spending and actual allocations for 2026, Kratsios said he wasn't aware of the details. The NSF must be "more deliberative" on what research receives funding, he said. A point of contention was a proposed change to how science grants are awarded that has drawn widespread criticism from researchers. If enacted, the Office of Management and Budget regulations would give political appointees, not peer reviewers, the power to choose which research proposals receive federal funding. Thousands of scientists, including several Nobel laureates, have criticized the rule change as damaging to U.S. science. Kratsios said the changes are necessary due to a "real decline in the types of grants that want to achieve groundbreaking or out of the box type of ideas," and said that NSF awards will continue to be merit-based.

The tech-broification of American science has officially begun

The Trump administration unveiled the first "Genesis Mission" grants on Thursday, directing $5 billion toward hundreds of AI-driven science projects in an effort the White House has described as "comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project." At roughly the same time, Trump's science adviser Michael Kratsios was on Capitol Hill selling lawmakers on an equally grandiose promise: "A New Golden Age" of American science, one that would prioritize artificial intelligence, robotics, and nuclear energy and downplay life sciences. Taken together, the two announcements offer the clearest picture yet of how Donald Trump wants to remake American science. They mark the latest front in a wider war on the research establishment -- one that has worked to suppress "woke" or DEI projects, threatened funding for universities, researchers, and projects on ideological grounds, curtailed the flow of international students and researchers, and handed unprecedented control over federal funding to political appointees. The result has been the gradual, systemic dismantling of the long-established norms and institutions that, for all their flaws, helped turn the United States into the world's scientific superpower. Researchers say the vision is ill-conceived, contradictory, and less a blueprint for scientific renewal than a politicized power grab that fundamentally misunderstands how science works. It treats public research more like a Silicon Valley startup than a public good, privileging measurable returns and speed over the slow, uncertain, and unpredictable work that has produced some of history's most consequential discoveries. Far from reviving US science, they warn, the agenda could prove disastrous for American research. The Genesis Mission grants span fields ranging from drug discovery and biomedical science to energy, advanced materials, and robotics. The 278 projects, reportedly selected from over 5,000 applications, all share a common premise: leveraging AI to accelerate scientific discovery. The Energy Department, which led this round of funding, said the project will unite national laboratories, industry, and academia to pursue "breakthroughs in energy dominance, discovery science, and national security." Technology companies including Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are also contributing millions of dollars in compute, AI credits, and other support to the initiative. Kratsios explicitly linked the program to the administration's broader science agenda, calling Genesis Mission "the culmination of the reforms suggested in" its "Golden Age" manifesto. Styled as a modern successor to Vannevar Bush's 1945 policy report "Science, the Endless Frontier," which shaped much of the postwar system of federal research funding, the lengthy document proposes shifting support away from institutions and toward individual scientists, while giving private companies a larger role in directing and conducting research, and political appointees more power to block grants they disagree with. AI features heavily, both as a tool for scientists and as an engine for discovery itself, and Kratsios encouraged government funds to increasingly go to AI use and individual researchers, rather than universities, traditional hubs of scholarship and research. More broadly, the manifesto favors a goal-oriented and results-driven approach that resembles a Silicon Valley startup more than traditional scientific enterprise. Venture capital and startup culture are built around identifying promising people, projects, and ideas, setting clear goals with measurable targets, and moving quickly, iterating constantly, and cutting work that seems unlikely to deliver results. Science operates differently. Basic research can take years or decades before its importance or practical implications become apparent and it requires a system capable of supporting work of uncertain, even seemingly dubious, value. Its outcomes cannot always be predicted, and some of the most important discoveries emerge serendipitously from research pursuing entirely different questions. A science funding system needs to account for those differences, said Claes de Vreese, a professor of AI and society at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. "You cannot use venture capital to force breakthroughs while virtually already selling the patent." That model also stands in stark contrast to Bush's championing of open-ended basic research pursued without an eye for immediate dividends, on the grounds that such work would ultimately yield applied breakthroughs. The scientific system built around that principle is what helped turn the United States into the world's research superpower. Even so, it is not the first time the Trump administration has invoked Bush's legacy to sell policies that would dismantle the system he helped create. Some of its proposals have obvious appeal, including reducing the administrative burdens on scientists, speeding up grantmaking, and making the system more flexible. Jason Shepherd, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Utah, told The Verge that "there are certainly some aspirations in this agenda that most US scientists would agree with: we need more stability, faster peer review, and more incentives to do high risk science." But Shepherd said the document looks like it "was written by political appointees without any real consultation with scientists" and warned that its assumptions science functions like a business were misplaced. "Academic science is different to VC funded startups or tech companies." It's an important distinction to make considering Kratsios' background. Unlike most White House science advisers, Kratsios is not a scientist in any sense of the word, and has no scientific credentials. He has a background in tech policy and finance, spending part of his working life at a fund run by Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel. Researchers say the report is permeated by this Silicon Valley mindset, as well as a profound lack of scientific understanding. "The report has no vision for how science works," said Harvard professor Jeffrey Flier, former dean of the university's medical school, adding that it "seems blissfully unaware" of the academic environment scientific research needs in order to flourish. "This is completely insane as an approach to reforming US science funding and operations," he said, branding the report's proposals a "major threat" and an effort to politicize and control science. Other researchers I spoke to feel similarly. The government's entire approach seems to be built on the "misguided belief that scientific breakthroughs in the future will come from the tech sector," Andreas Karch, a physics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Verge. "While American tech is also leading in their field, tech and science aren't the same," he said, adding that today's scientific leadership will secure tomorrow's tech leadership. "There is little evidence that our big tech companies, despite their stunning successes, can do both." Not that the proposals make that much sense, either. "The agenda is rife with contradictions," Shepherd said, pointing to a proposal that suggests radically reducing government support for "life sciences," while increasing support for "foundational research in the biological sciences," two categories that have substantial overlap. Neither the report nor the White House defines those terms or explains which fields would gain or lose funding. The narrow focus on AI is also "misguided," Karch said. While there's certainly a chance it will accelerate progress, he said "right now the problem is that most science done by AI is absolute slop." Supervision by humans seems "absolutely key," he said, but those humans are primarily trained by the universities having their funding slashed. "We may well end up in the situation where AI will have a few major insights buried under mountains of slop, and the number of people with the experience and knowledge to tell the two apart may rapidly dwindle," he said, adding that the government's actions are actually hindering scientists' abilities to make use of these powerful new technologies. The funding and document arrive amid sweeping cuts, grant cancellations, and institutional upheaval across the entire federal funding system, rocking universities, research centers, and government agencies nationwide. Researchers say that reality is difficult to reconcile with the administration's promise of a new "golden age" for American science. "As an outsider to the US system, this seems to be a further attempt at dismantling the US research universities," said de Vreese. He called Kratsios' vision "a fundamental departure from a very successful US science model" that looks like another attempt to "upend the US research university model." That departure could spell disaster. Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington, told The Verge the plan fundamentally misunderstands and misrepresents the role US funding agencies play in the scientific endeavor. While they do in part promote technological discoveries and medical breakthroughs -- key priorities in the report -- they are also designed to "develop and perpetuate a vibrant STEM ecosystem in the US," Bergstrom said. "This plan undercuts much of that role, and will have disastrous effects that will ricochet throughout the US economy in years to come." That narrow view of science, focused on outcomes, applications, and measurable returns, is precisely what this new model gets wrong. It treats science like a business, which makes sense given Trump has said he runs the country like one. Most researchers who spoke to The Verge were deeply skeptical this plan would usher in the promised golden age of American science, with many warning it could cause lasting damage. For other groups, notably those closest to power, the future could look brighter. "This looks like a golden age for specific groups and likely for tech and venture capitalists," de Vreese said. Shepherd said "academic science cannot be replaced by a business model." Most research scientists seem to agree with that sentiment, but the Trump administration seems determined to try anyway.

US to spend $5 billion on health, construction research powered by AI

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. will spend $5 billion to tackle long-standing scientific problems across multiple fields using AI, the Trump administration said in a statement on Wednesday. The agencies will use the funding to identify the root causes of chronic diseases, accelerate drug discovery and develop longer-lasting building materials, among other tasks, according to the statement. Scientists will have access to the Department of Energy's supercomputers, AI and specialized datasets, along with other components needed to run experiments using algorithms, said Michael Kratsios, chief technology adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, in an interview with Reuters. Fifteen federal ⁠agencies will be involved in the project, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation, Defense and Interior. "The White House is helping bring together all of the different agencies that work on different domains to make them part of this larger effort on AI for science," Kratsios said. The Trump administration also plans to overhaul how the U.S. government funds federal research by supporting more individual scientists and the use of AI, rather than universities, according to a White House report released Tuesday night, authored by Kratsios. This would give the ⁠Trump administration more control over how the money is used. "Federal support for science must be politically accountable," the report said. During his second term Trump has tried to exert more control over how federal research dollars are allocated. Federal courts have pushed back, with an appeals panel saying in January the ⁠Trump administration cannot cut federal grant funding provided by the National Institutes of Health to universities engaged in scientific and medical research. AI models need data to identify patterns, generate predictions and automate decisions. The ⁠U.S. government is home to some of the largest data sets in the world, including records about chemicals, critical minerals and patient health. The $5 billion research initiative is an opportunity to ⁠train AI models on that information and use those algorithms to answer scientific questions, Kratsios said. Microsoft will donate $40 million in AI computing credits over three years to support the effort, according to a company statement. Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by Stephen Coates Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Disrupted * Public Policy Courtney Rozen Thomson Reuters Courtney Rozen reports on the world's largest technology companies from Washington, D.C., focusing on the relationship between the tech industry and the U.S. government. She reported on DOGE and the federal workforce during the first year of U.S. President Donald Trump's second term. Prior to joining Reuters, she was a White House correspondent at Bloomberg Government. She graduated from American University with a master's degree in journalism. Contact: [email protected]

Trump Plan for 'Golden Age' of Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities

President Trump's science adviser told lawmakers on Wednesday that the Trump administration intended to drastically overhaul the country's approach to scientific research, including by shifting research funding away from universities toward individual researchers and private companies. At a House hearing, Michael Kratsios echoed points he laid out in a report released Tuesday, titled "Science: A New Golden Age." He said the administration would prioritize artificial intelligence, robotics and nuclear energy while reducing the government's focus on what he called "life sciences." "Our ability to make transformational breakthroughs here in the United States has slowed," Mr. Kratsios told lawmakers in the hearing on Wednesday. "Maybe we should be testing other ways to make breakthroughs than what we've been doing for so many years." Democrats countered that the Trump administration had harmed scientific research by firing staff members at federal science agencies, seeking deep cuts to research programs, canceling or freezing grants, punishing universities that Mr. Trump is unhappy with, and pushing some of the best researchers in the United States to relocate to other countries. "Let me propose an alternative title: 'Unleashing the Golden Age of Science in the People's Republic of China,'" Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House science committee, told Mr. Kratsios at the start of the hearing. "This administration has been systematically destroying the U.S. science enterprise." The White House billed Tuesday's report as "the first comprehensive rethinking of the U.S. science and technology enterprise in over 80 years," since one written by Vannevar Bush, the organizer of the Manhattan Project, which produced the world's first atomic bomb. Dr. Bush's 1945 report set the stage for the current system, in which the government funds basic research, universities conduct it, and private companies commercialize it. Mr. Kratsios' proposal to reduce the role of universities would upend that system, which has been in place since the end of World War II. His call for the administration to de-prioritize "life sciences," which encompass molecular biology, genetics and other fields in biomedicine, as well as clinical trials aimed at testing new therapies, raised alarms among biomedical researchers and academic medical centers. They fear it will mean less funding for the National Institutes of Health. Jeremy M. Berg, who led the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, an arm of N.I.H., during the Bush and Obama administrations, called the report "tremendously misinformed." He said Mr. Kratsios was ignoring the serendipity of science by zeroing in so closely on artificial intelligence. "I think they're trying to turn it into a venture capital model," said Dr. Berg, an expert in computational and systems biology medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. "Why the federal government should be investing in that, I don't know." Unlike most presidential science advisers, Mr. Kratsios is not a scientist. He has a background in Silicon Valley, where he worked at an investment fund run by Peter Thiel, the prominent venture capitalist who backed Mr. Trump's first presidential bid. Mr. Kratsios' educational background is also unlike that of his predecessors: While previous science advisers held doctorates, Mr. Kratsios has a bachelor's degree in politics from Princeton, and no other degrees. The report from Mr. Kratsios, who also leads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, begins with a broad indictment of the federal government's approach to funding scientific research. Mr. Kratsios argued that while investments in research had increased in recent decades, the results of that investment had failed to keep pace. "Scientific productivity has slowed," he wrote. Among the examples he cites: "Despite massive increases in biomedical funding since the 1990s, the rate of significant breakthroughs appears to have slowed, and drug approvals have flatlined." To address that problem, Mr. Kratsios called for reducing the amount of time researchers have to spend applying for grants, and directing science agencies to come up with ways to better measure the returns on their investments. He also directed federal science agencies to focus on a handful of priorities set by the White House, including physical sciences, chemistry and biological sciences. Those fields, he wrote, were crucial to what he called the Trump administration's "national missions" -- a list that includes artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, robotics, quantum computing and space exploration. The report is less clear on the areas of scientific research for which the federal government should reduce funding. It says federal agencies "should prioritize foundational research in the biological sciences over the life sciences." Spokesmen for the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not answer questions about what they meant by "life sciences" and "foundational research." Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees U.S. biomedical research enterprise, said the report aligned with his own emphasis on using artificial intelligence to uncover the root causes of what he calls an "epidemic" of chronic disease, especially among children. "America will lead the next generation of medical discovery by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence," he said in a statement. The report does not address the Trump administration's decision to fire large numbers of staff members at scientific agencies. It calls for the government to invest in young researchers, without noting that the administration fired scores of young scientists and terminated hundreds of grants to early career researchers. It is also silent on the more than 40 percent funding cuts sought by the White House at the National Science Foundation, as well as a proposal in May from the White House Office of Management and Budget that federal grants for scientific research be screened by political appointees, to block initiatives that "promote anti-American values." In Wednesday's hearing, Democrats pushed Mr. Kratsios on those points, asking how they aligned with his pledge to restore what he called "gold standard science." Letting political appointees block grants they disagree with is "simply incompatible with any kind of commitment to robust scientific research," Representative Deborah Ross of North Carolina said to Mr. Kratsios. "The victories that you're touting are merely cheap, shiny distractions." In response, Mr. Kratsios did not directly defend the administration's proposal for political oversight grants. "I look forward to working closely with O.M.B. to ensure that our enterprise continues to remain world class and trustworthy and accountable," he said. One area in which Mr. Kratsios indicated a measure of disagreement with the administration's actions was on the pace of grants from the National Science Foundation. Representative George Whitesides, Democrat of California, displayed charts comparing the rate at which money had been awarded this year with previous years, asking Mr. Kratsios to explain why the funding had slowed. When Mr. Kratsios said that was a question for the National Science Foundation, Mr. Whitesides called the answer unacceptable. "You're the president's science adviser," Mr. Whitesides said. "Why is this happening?" "I do see these charts, and nothing would make me happier to make sure that we are getting closer to where we were in previous years," Mr. Kratsios said. "I'll do everything that I possibly can to help move that line, because I think it's important for us to get the appropriate dollars out to scientists." Adam Sella and William J. Broad contributed reporting.

White House proposes largest science funding overhaul since 1945

The White House has proposed the largest rethinking of federal science funding in more than 80 years. The plan would move money away from universities and toward individual scientists, small research teams, and artificial intelligence. It reaches nearly every agency that pays for research in the United States. A new blueprint for discovery The Office of Science and Technology Policy released the report on Tuesday, July 21, 2026. Its director, Michael Kratsios, co-signed a companion budget memo with Russell Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget. The document reshapes how the government spends roughly $200 billion a year on research and development. The administration frames the overhaul as a race to stay ahead of China across AI, quantum computing, and other frontier fields. The report draws a direct line to 1945, when Vannevar Bush wrote "Science: The Endless Frontier." That earlier blueprint built the modern partnership in which the government funds basic research, universities carry it out, and companies bring the results to market. Kratsios argues that this system has grown slow and top-heavy. Investment has climbed for decades, he wrote, yet the pace of real discovery has not kept up. Money that follows the scientist The plan asks agencies to add faster, higher-risk ways to award grants alongside traditional peer review. The memo says the current model rewards safe, incremental work. Among the new tools are "golden tickets," which let a single reviewer fund a proposal that a committee would reject. "Fast grants" would shrink applications to a few pages and cut review times to under a month. The report also promotes portable awards that a researcher keeps when moving between institutions. For universities, that is the sharp edge. Money they have long treated as core support would instead follow individuals and new teams built for risky projects. Prizes and open challenges round out the list. Many would be structured to draw at least three private dollars for every federal dollar. The aim is to stretch public funds further and pull in outside investors. AI at the center The overhaul puts AI at the core of how discovery happens. Agencies are told to treat the Genesis Mission, launched in November 2025, as a central priority. Its stated goal is to double research productivity within a decade. The report calls for scientific foundation models trained on curated federal datasets. It also envisions autonomous laboratories where AI systems propose ideas, run experiments, and refine them with limited human input. That vision follows a broader trend, as recent work has shown AI solving complex equations in a fraction of the time once required. The same mission-driven logic runs through a list of national goals. They include a commercial fusion power demonstration by the mid-2030s, advances in quantum computing, general-purpose robotics, next-generation semiconductors, and a return of Americans to the Moon by 2028. Alarm over the life sciences At a House hearing the next day, Kratsios named the administration's top priorities: AI, robotics, and nuclear energy. He said the government would reduce its focus on what he called "life sciences." Those fields include molecular biology, genetics, and clinical trials that test new therapies. Biomedical researchers fear the shift means less money for the National Institutes of Health. Critics also question the messenger. Kratsios holds a bachelor's degree in politics and previously worked at a venture investment fund. Unlike his predecessors, he is not a trained scientist. Jeremy Berg, a former NIH institute director now at the University of Pittsburgh, called the report "tremendously misinformed." Its narrow focus on AI ignores the role of serendipity in science, he said. Some officials welcomed the plan. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it matched his own push to use AI against chronic disease. Guidance now, funding later Most of the report is advisory. Congress, not the White House, writes the research budget, so the priorities are recommendations for agency requests in fiscal 2028. One provision carries weight. Within 90 days, every agency with at least $3 billion in 2026 research budget authority must send Kratsios and Vought an action plan. Whether the National Science Foundation and its peers adopt fast grants and portable awards, or simply file the memo, will decide how much changes. The stakes for universities are already visible. Leading research universities reported about 15 percent fewer applicants to doctoral programs in the fall of 2026 than a year earlier. Democrats on the House science committee pushed back hard during the hearing. "This administration has been systematically destroying the U.S. science enterprise," said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California. The full report, titled "Science: A New Golden Age," was released by the White House. Additional reporting on the congressional hearing appeared in The New York Times. -- - Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates. Check us out on EarthSnap, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

White House wants to shift billions of dollars of research funding away from 'slow consensus peer review' and into individual scientists and AI

AI should be at the forefront of scientific research, White House says * The White House wants to reallocate hundreds of billions of dollar worth of federal funding away from universities and peer reviewed research panels * The funding would instead go to individual scientists and AI-native laboratories * The credibility of the plan is undermined by the US government's track record on science and AI The Trump administration has unveiled plans to shift around $200 billion dollars of research funding into individual scientists and a 'national AI-for-science initiative'. The move would pull funding from university research and 'slow' consensus peer review panels in an effort to stay ahead of China, which is making strides to catch up in AI and quantum computing technology. Plans were laid out in a new report, dubbed 'Science: A New Golden Age', presented to Donald Trump by the Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Michael Kratsios. Funding to be moved to AI and individual scientists Peer-reviewed study has been the basis of American research since the end of World War II, but Krastios says that science must again be reinvented in a way "that frees American scientists to do their most groundbreaking work, revives the national pursuit of ambitious scientific missions, and positions the United States to lead the AI-driven scientific revolution that will define the next century." The report is a suggestion of the direction the Trump administration wants to shape the future of federal funding for science, but the federal funding budget is underwritten by Congress. The point of peer reviewed research is to prevent research from being performed in an echo chamber, to spot errors and misinformation, and to provide criticism on research methodology and bias. By moving away from peer review and placing funding with individual scientists (likely vetted by the government to provide conclusions that toe the party line), this shift in how academic research is conducted will undermine US scientific credibility both at home and on the global stage. The report also suggested providing full funding for the 'Genesis Mission', which seeks to unite "National Labs, industry, academia, and more to harness AI for breakthroughs in energy dominance, discovery science, and national security" by creating "AI-native scientific institutions better suited to an era of machine-augmented research." There are obviously use-cases for AI in science, but the US government does not have the best track record of using AI for science. The US government has already been previously caught out using AI to create documents presented in hearings, with a research report presented by US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being riddled with errors and citing studies that did not exist - a classic case of AI hallucination. Trump has also made significant deviations to the direction of climate science in the US, with peer-reviewed authoritative assessments on the US national climate being deleted from US government websites, the US withdrawal from the Paris Accord, alongside funding and staffing cuts across the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Mauna Loa Observatory, and multiple climate monitoring centers. In order to maintain the forefront of AI development, the US is also experiencing a mass-buildout of AI data centers to provide capacity for usage, training, and development of frontier models. But this has presented a major challenge in providing enough power to sites already running, as well as planned sites that will require multi-gigawatt connections. Trump has encouraged AI companies and data center developers to lean into fossil fuels to provide extra energy capacity, with many AI campuses deploying natural gas burning turbines. Some of these sites operate at noise levels matching an international airport 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with local residents reporting illnesses and symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vertigo, and sleep disruption as a result of the infrasound emitting from turbines. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Trump administration says 15 agencies will get $5bn in 'AI for science' effort

Administration will also overhaul how US government funds federal research by supporting individual scientists and AI over universities The US will spend $5bn to tackle longstanding scientific problems across multiple fields using AI, ⁠the Trump administration said in a statement on Wednesday. The agencies will use the funding to identify the root causes ⁠of chronic diseases, accelerate drug ⁠discovery and develop longer-lasting building materials, among other tasks, according to the statement. Scientists will have access to the Department of Energy's supercomputers, AI and specialized ⁠datasets, along with other components needed to run experiments using algorithms, said Michael Kratsios, chief technology adviser to Donald Trump, in an ⁠interview with Reuters. Fifteen federal agencies will be involved in the project, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation, Defense and Interior. "The White House is helping bring together all of the different agencies that work on different domains to make them part of this larger effort on AI for science," Kratsios said. The Trump administration also plans to overhaul how the US government funds federal research by supporting more individual scientists and the use of AI, rather than universities, according to a White House report released Tuesday night, authored by Kratsios. This would give the Trump administration more control over how the money is used. "Federal support for science must be politically accountable," the report said. During his second term, Trump has tried to exert more control over how federal research dollars are allocated. Federal courts have pushed back, with an appeals panel saying in January the Trump administration cannot cut federal grant funding provided by the National Institutes of Health to ⁠universities engaged in scientific and medical research. AI models need data to identify patterns, generate predictions and automate decisions. The US government is home to some of the largest datasets in the world, including records about chemicals, critical minerals and patient health. The $5bn research initiative is an opportunity to train AI models on that information and use those algorithms to answer scientific questions, Kratsios said. Microsoft will donate $40m in AI computing credits over three years to support the effort, according to a company statement.

The Trump administration is revamping the era of the 'gentleman scientist.' It'll cost $200 billion | Fortune

The "Golden Age of Science" had no scientists. For nearly three centuries, discoverers like Darwin and Copernicus, still wrestling to break free from Greek thought, called themselves "natural philosophers." They made discoveries based on their own curiosity. The purest of them answered to no one: Robert Boyle had an earl's fortune, Henry Cavendish a banking one, Charles Darwin a family inheritance that bought him 20 years to dwell on barnacles. This era of the "gentleman scientist," of course, was limited to those with wealth, but that was considered a kind of purity -- that nothing but curiosity fueled their discoveries. So when the word "scientist" was coined in 1833, half in jest, many of the men it described refused to answer to it. They could see what it implied: a salary, an institution -- a profession, with all the red tape and standards the 19th century's Enlightenment was so eager to build. Indeed, science would go on to get departments, degrees, grant applications, and, eventually, a federal budget. The Trump administration wants to bring back this era of the gentleman scientist. In a 123-page report published Tuesday, titled "Science: A New Golden Age," the White House argued the professionalized machine those stuffy Victorians built had calcified into exactly what the gentlemen feared, a system in which researchers spend half their working hours on paperwork. Its solution is to fund the person, not the institution. They want fellowships to follow particular scientists, as opposed to sticking to a university; they want reviewers to get "golden tickets," meaning the power for a single believer to fund an unconventional proposal the panel would've otherwise killed; they want "fast grants for agencies." They also want the government to charter new institutions outside the universities entirely, called "X-labs," small, focused outfits built to chase a single hard problem and then dissolve, the way a Victorian gentleman might have devoted a decade to one obsession and moved on. "Too much of our research enterprise has come to serve itself rather than the scientists within it," the authors wrote. But the report's gentleman scientist has a tool -- nay, a colleague -- the Victorians couldn't dream of. The document argues AI should become a "new instrument of scientific discovery," a partner that will help scientific enterprise maximize the "marginal returns to intelligence." The White House put $5 billion behind the idea after the report's release, though The Wall Street Journal calculates the overall cost of the overhaul at $200 billion. Indeed, lay scientists and mathematicians have recently made some breakthroughs in their fields with large language models. An Anthropic employee and mathematician recently overturned a nearly century-old axiom with the help of Claude, prompting Garry Tan, the founder of startup-funder Y-Combinator, to announce the era of the gentleman scientist is back. Many scientists lauded the proposal on social media for its depth. Alec Stapp, a cofounder of the Institute for Progress, a think tank whose recommendations appear in the report, praised its funding experiments, but said it misses on international scientists -- a nod to the administration's continued attack on immigration. "Being the top destination for global science talent is America's superpower," Stapp wrote on X. If scientists are leaving the U.S. after grad school, he argued, the answer is to make it easier for them to stay. Some academics were less pleased. Steven Durlauf, an economist at the University of Chicago, wrote on X the report shifts support from basic to applied research in a way that "misunderstands the scientific enterprise," and its proposals undermine peer review "in favor of political control and oversight." Durlauf signed an open letter opposing what it calls the administration's "assault on science," which now has more than 10,000 signatories, including two Nobel laureates. "As scientists, we are committed to a discipline that is decentralized and self-scrutinizing," the letter reads. "Instead, this administration mandates a centralized system serving the political beliefs of the President and the whims of those in power."