The $30 million program called APTO—Assessing and Predicting Technology Outcomes—funds research to evaluate the effectiveness of R&D investments in technology and create models and information for decision-makers to optimize investments and advance long-term U.S. competitiveness.
Specific technology areas of interest are those outlined in the “CHIPS and Science Act” of 2022: energy; materials; artificial intelligence; high-performance computing or semiconductors; quantum information technology; bioengineering; robotics; technology for disaster prevention; communications technology; and data storage.
APTO awards of up to five years will support:
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A cohort of projects that work together to complement each other’s R&D efforts on technology outcome models accurately describing technology capabilities, technology production, and technology use.
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The assimilation of data and creation of models that accurately describe past and future technology outcomes, specifically their capabilities, production, or use.
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Models that can predict which investments would reliably change or accelerate outcomes by correctly capturing the various causal relationships.
The program announcement notes that building and testing technology outcome models will require significant quantities of specialized data gathered from history, experiments, or expert elicitation.
APTO is a project of TIP, the NSF’s Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships. For more information, refer to the APTO funding opportunity.
