The U.S. National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 states and U.S. territories. NSF was established in 1950 by Congress to promote the progress of science, advance the national health, prosperity and welfare, and secure the national defense.
The grant program aims to promote fundamental research that enhances the conceptual understanding, development, and prediction capabilities in materials science. Specifically, it supports projects that utilize first-principles electronic structure, quantum many-body and field theories, statistical mechanics, classical and quantum Monte Carlo, and molecular dynamics methods. The program encourages research that pushes new paradigms including data-analytics and machine learning in materials research. Computational efforts of any scale, focusing on insight into material properties and the prediction of new materials and phenomena, are emphasized. Of interest are projects involving strongly correlated electron systems, topological phases, low-dimensional materials, nonequilibrium phenomena, materials growth, sustainable materials, and biologically inspired materials, among others. This broad remit ensures a diverse range of topical areas within the materials science discipline are covered, promoting a multidisciplinary approach to solve complex materials challenges.