The NSF View: America's Investment in the Future in the New Global Era
The 2016 Science & Engineering Indicators reveals an increase in collaborative authorship of published research, and the collaborations are frequently international. Recent funding trends show many nations increasing investment in science and engineering. Increasing global investment provides more opportunity to advance transformative science by leveraging our investments through collaborations with other nations.
NSF’s numerous international partnerships are addressing challenges with global impacts, such as building low-carbon smart cities and providing access to clean water. We have aided humanitarian responses to natural disasters and to disease outbreaks such as Ebola and Zika. Current NSF initiatives address the global challenges of Understanding the Brain, Understanding and Modeling the Food-Energy-Water Nexus, and Understanding and Preparing for Extreme Events.
A very visible manifestation of international partnership is in the large astronomical facilities NSF supports, a suite of ground-based Great Observatories, nearly all of which have international participation. The powerful instruments in these observatories are providing discoveries and data that are fueling studies of star birth and evolution, galaxy formation, extreme environments.
Preparing future scientists and engineers to work in a global context is part of NSF’s mission, and opportunities abound for students to collaborate among international peers. International educational and research collaborations are vital to the progress of science in the United States and thus central to our work at NSF.
International collaboration provides benefits and opportunities for the science community and helps advance NSF’s mission to promote the progress of science through discoveries and discoverers.