IPA Senior Advisor (Frontier Initiative Lead)

Summary

The U.S. National Science Foundation seeks visionary Frontier Initiative Leads to serve up to three years, guiding thesis-driven efforts that address major scientific opportunities through cross-disciplinary collaboration. These initiatives tackle complex challenges that span multiple fields, including intelligence and cognition, quantum science, advanced materials, and biological design, bringing together expertise across science, engineering, mathematics, computing, and related disciplines.

Duties

For more than 75 years, NSF's directorates have sustained the depth of expertise on which American scientific leadership depends. In the intervening period, the organization of scientific practice has changed. Many of the most consequential questions before researchers today do not belong to a single established discipline, and many of the capabilities required to answer those questions are distributed across fields, institutions, sectors, and levels of technological readiness. The study of intelligence and cognition increasingly draws together computer and information science, mathematics, neuroscience, engineering, biology, and the behavioral sciences. Developing a greater understanding of quantum phenomena depends on advances in fundamental physics, materials, devices, computation, engineering, and advanced manufacturing. The ability to discover, control, replicate, and produce advanced forms of materials and matter requires deep integration across chemistry, physics, computation, and engineering. The next era of biological design and engineering will require foundational and enabling research across biology, mathematics, chemistry, engineering, computation, and the study of complex systems. Frontier Initiatives will enable ambitious, multidisciplinary efforts, with the explicit mandate to draw on expertise across NSF and the research community to identify how individual areas of science can advance each scientific frontier. Frontier Initiatives will identify emerging opportunities, address scientific bottlenecks, build new scientific capabilities, and mobilize research communities. Leads will connect complementary investments and assemble scientific portfolios to advance consequential frontiers that no single NSF component could achieve alone. The initial NSF Frontier Initiatives are defined as follows. Future of Intelligence will advance our fundamental understanding of intelligence, aimed at breakthroughs in the architectures, measurement, and science of learning that will define the next paradigm of super intelligence (SI). Just as neuroscience laid the groundwork for neural networks, the next paradigm will likely come from outside computer science and draw deliberately on physics, mathematics, biology, neuroscience, and engineering. Frontiers of Quantum Phenomena will advance foundational research in quantum information science and technology, building the physical understanding, materials, and theory needed to compute, sense, and communicate in ways that exceed the capabilities of classical systems. This initiative will also support the engineering and instrumentation breakthroughs required to realize the scientific application of quantum capabilities. Advanced Materials and Matter will advance the design, discovery, and manipulation of the materials that underpin nearly every other frontier, drawing from expertise in physics, computing, semiconductors, robotics, fusion, and biomanufacturing. This initiative will also advance early-stage research on materials synthesis methods and replication practices that accelerates the cycle of discovery, synthesis, and characterization. Foundations of Biological Design will advance the measurement and intervention tools to read, write, and reliably control living systems in the physical world. A small number of such tools (e.g., gene editing, low-cost synthesis and sequencing, advanced microscopy) have driven much of modern biology, and the next generation of tools will also draw deliberately on engineering, mathematics, chemistry, and materials science. FRONTIER INITIATIVE LEADS Each Frontier Initiative Lead will have full responsibility for the design, development, and implementation of a vision, strategy, and technical roadmap to accelerate discovery and transformative breakthroughs in a Frontier Initiatives. The NSF Frontier Initiative Leads will work closely with the NSF Director, Chief Science Officer, directorate leadership, and staff across the agency to identify critical scientific bottlenecks; establish agency-wide milestones and goals for the Frontier Initiative; connect diffuse programs across directorates and coordinate with existing research agendas; build and manage a portfolio of activities and programs that leverages discipline-specific expertise to accelerate discovery across every domain of the Frontier; and build partnerships with other federal agencies, the private sector, and philanthropy on behalf of NSF and the U.S. government. In constructing the portfolio, Frontier Initiative Leads are expected to use the full range of scientific funding mechanisms available, including conventional grant programs, milestone-based funding, and prizes and challenges, matching the choice of mechanism to the underlying scientific questions. Each Frontier Initiative Lead will report directly to the U.S. NSF Chief Science Officer.

Qualifications

Candidates must possess advanced and/or senior-level professional or technical expertise, evidenced by recognized stature within the relevant community or by unique and extensive industry experience pertinent to NSF's critical mission needs. Successful candidates for Frontier Initiative Lead positions will: Serve as recognized experts in their Frontier Initiative area, with demonstrated research excellence, proven leadership experience, and a strong record of effective collaboration. Represent the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in engagements with the broader research community, including academic institutions, industry partners, and international stakeholders, to advance and promote Frontier Initiative priorities.

Education

Please refer to the Qualifications section.