National Science Foundation Fuels High-Risk X-Labs

When the U.S. National Science Foundation began its X-Labs program in May, the agency said the higher-risk, higher-funded awards would create new kinds of partnerships that would confront urgent scientific and technological challenges. Now the NSF is doubling down on the idea, with an announcement in October that charities, companies, and investment funds would provide X-Lab winners practical support such as laboratory space, software, shared equipment, and access to key data and expert guidance.

The help provided by these organizations, which the NSF is calling “consortium partners,” will not give them ownership stakes in the X-Labs projects. The addition of the consortium partners may help the initial winners—who will be announced later in November or December and receive US $1.5 million for a 9-month planning phase—reach the aggressive targets needed to compete for much larger $50 million multiyear grants.

“It’s a way of telling X-Labs applicants you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, so you’re not spending half of your X-Labs money to go build or buy basic infrastructure,” says Matt Cimaglia, an investor in consortium partners Occam Foundry and Florida Quantum Center.

NSF X-Labs Focus on AI, Computing, and More

The NSF initially announced two focus areas for the X-Labs program: scientific instruments for sensing and imaging and photonic microchips for quantum systems. In September, the agency followed up with three additional areas in AI for physical devices, decoding biological sequences, and pushing the physical limits of computing.

The NSF requires potential X-Labs award recipients to eventually demonstrate autonomy: Leaders for projects must be focused on the work full-time, for example, and must be able to make hiring and spending decisions independently from any university or commercial owners. That agility sets X-Labs apart, along with the risk appetite.

Consortium partners saw the potential to provide infrastructure and operations support to allow X-Labs recipients to focus on research. “[We’re] very interested in the enabling structures of R&D,” says Joshua M. Greenberg, program director at the Sloan Foundation, one of the participating partners.

Greenberg says that the foundation has supported multiple focused research organizations, or FROs, already. FROs are independent entities in the same vein as what the X-Labs program hopes to create. Unlike university laboratories or larger tech companies, FROs are founded with a time-limited purpose of advancing research in a well-defined area. Because they start with a clean slate, FROs may lack the infrastructure that university or corporate research groups might inherit.

To address that lack of infrastructure, bioengineering service firm Ginkgo Bioworks, in Boston, is offering X-Lab winners up to $5 million worth of access to its “cloud lab,” says Jason Kelly, the firm’s CEO and founder. Ginkgo’s cloud lab can conduct complex and flexible laboratory work, and…