To balance the long bets, the agency is encouraging grantees to make greater use of existing short-term rapid grants that quickly test or kill a fresh idea.

Who is leading the effort?

Brian Stone, Performing the Duties of the NSF Director, framed the package in directly competitive terms.

"America's scientific enterprise is shaped by how we empower researchers to explore the frontiers of discovery," Stone said. "The investment that we are announcing today will enable researchers to accelerate fundamental research, giving rise to the transformational breakthroughs that will power our future."

White House science adviser Michael Kratsios tied the move to broader industrial policy.

"In Science: A New Golden Age, the administration made foundational research in the sciences and engineering a national priority," said Kratsios, Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "NSF's investments today ensure the United States continues to drive the scientific breakthroughs that underpin the industries of the future and will support a wider range of meritorious science by matching the size, speed and duration of an award to the character of the research it supports."

What is the experiment within the experiment?

NSF plans to treat the rollout as a structured study of its own. The agency will "rigorously assess and validate" whether changes to proposal design, award duration, review methods, and funding speed actually improve the ambition and quality of resulting science.

If the data support the changes, NSF says it will scale them over time. The plan echoes "metascience" — the study of how research itself is funded, reviewed, and communicated — a theme central to the FY 2028 memo.

What about new or unconventional labs?

The new solicitations are shorter, fewer in number, and easier to navigate than past calls, NSF said, an effort to open its funding to a broader cross-section of the country and reduce paperwork burden.

The shift accompanies a merit-review pilot NSF announced last winter. That pilot adds pathways to surface unconventional proposals that traditional consensus panels often filter out. Early-career researchers are encouraged to apply across all 12 NOFOs.

What remains uncertain

The package assumes congressional appropriations for FY 2028 will materialize. The new five-year awards also depend on peer reviewers tolerating higher-risk applications — a cultural shift past NSF attempts have struggled to enforce.

Outsiders will need NSF to publish evaluation data before judging whether the portfolio model produces more high-impact science than the agency's prior approach.