§19211 Early-career research fellowship program

Summary

Creates a 2-year NSF pilot to give early-career researchers awards to run their own research at a college, university, or federal research site they choose. Awards last no more than two years. Recipients must be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or lawful permanent residents. NSF must recruit applicants from every region, from groups underrepresented in STEM, and from a range of schools, including HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, minority-serving institutions, schools outside the top 50 in federal research funding, and EPSCoR institutions. Extra consideration goes to applicants from those schools. Each awardee must report within 180 days after the pilot ends on how they used the money. NSF must report to Congress within 90 days after year two with a summary of fund uses and program impact, detailed statistics on awardees (race, ethnicity, sex, geography, age, years since PhD, and institution type), and, if the pilot worked, a plan to make it permanent.