§19211 Early-career Research Fellowship Program

Summary

The Director of the National Science Foundation can set up a two-year pilot fellowship program to give awards to top early-career researchers. The awards fund an independent research program at a college, university, or federal research lab the researcher picks, for up to two years. Recipients must be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or lawful permanent residents. The Foundation must recruit applicants from across the country, from groups underrepresented in STEM, and from many kinds of schools, including HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, minority-serving institutions, schools not in the top 50 for federal research funding, and EPSCoR institutions. The program must give special consideration and priority to applicants who graduated from or plan to do research at those kinds of institutions. Each awardee must file a report within 180 days after the pilot ends explaining how they used the funds. Within 90 days after the pilot’s second year ends, the Director must report to Congress with a summary of how funds were used and the program’s impact, statistics on fellows broken down by race, ethnicity, sex, geography, age, years since completing a doctoral degree, and institution type, and, if the pilot proved effective, a plan to make the program permanent.