NSF hosts first-ever Industry Partnership Summit

Industry leaders from a range of sectors explore opportunities to expand public-private partnerships that advance key technologies, address societal and economic challenges and accelerate workforce development.

The U.S. National Science Foundation, led by its new Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, or TIP, hosted an “NSF Industry Partnership Summit” on Wednesday, April 26, 2023. More than 50 industry leaders from a range of sectors came together to explore effective models for public-private partnerships that can in turn advance key technologies, address societal and economic challenges, and accelerate workforce development. Through co-investing with NSF on research, education and infrastructure, companies can complement their traditional research and development investments, leverage and expand available funding to achieve their longer-term goals, broaden participation in their R&D activities and fill their workforce needs.

“Fostering candid conversations and engaging discussions on how co-investing between NSF and industry partners will enable innovation in key technologies, address societal and economic challenges, support vibrant growth of U.S. industry and nurture the reskilling of the American workforce nationwide,” said Erwin Gianchandani, assistant director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships. “This convening of industry leaders was the first foray to seek out nontraditional, innovative approaches to enhance public-private partnership models and help identify effective strategies.”

The "CHIPS and Science Act" — signed into law on August 9, 2022 — laid out a new vision for the American research enterprise, including new opportunities to accelerate progress in key technology areas, foster partnerships with the private sector to enable this progress, and translate science and technology into solutions to major challenges. This vision for the future encourages NSF to take bold steps and experiment with new approaches for creating a collaborative ecosystem for use-inspired and translational research.

This summit allowed NSF to hear from a strategic set of corporate science and technology leaders on effective strategies, as well as nontraditional approaches to enhance public-private partnership models. NSF and industry leaders identified and prioritized topics relevant to joint investment and associated models for engagement.

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