American Science Needs a National Research Enterprise Council

by Michael W. Nestor, Ph.D., Neuroscientist, Science Policy Leader, and Executive who served as Board Director for the Government-University-Industry-Philanthropy Research Roundtable (GUIPRR) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

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A recent policy perspective in Tech Policy Press by Cole Donovan makes a point that deserves more attention in science-policy debates, namely that policy moves through people and process. Agencies do not align because an idea is persuasive on its merits or even has a quorum of supporters within a single agency. Someone must bring the right officials together, define the question, control the sequence of decisions, and keep the work moving when attention shifts elsewhere, as is often the case in Washington, D.C.

I saw this first-hand as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow serving on an interagency committee at the Department of Energy, and later while leading the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Government-University-Industry-Philanthropy Research Roundtable. In both settings, the same institutional challenge kept appearing. Many of the most consequential problems in American science at the federal level sit between institutions. No single agency owns the research workforce, the condition of shared infrastructure, the relationship between federal investment and private capital, or the growing geographic concentration of scientific capacity. The national scientific apparatus has studied these issues repeatedly without creating a place responsible for carrying them forward. The most recent example of this is in the renewed hype around metascience and its applications to federal policy.

The Tech Policy Press piece proposes strengthening the White House’s ability to direct interagency work. The next administration, it argues, will need that capacity. OSTP must be able to work closely with OMB, the National Security Council, and agency leadership, especially when decisions have to move quickly.

But concentrating more coordinating authority inside the White House leaves the underlying institutional problem in place. National science policy would still be organized around the President’s personnel, priorities, and political calendar. The next administration may use that machinery well. The administration after it will inherit the same machinery and can redirect it just as quickly.

American science also needs a standing institution responsible for the problems that extend beyond a presidential term. Federal agencies, universities, industry, philanthropy, states, and regional leaders need a place where they can work through questions that no one institution can resolve on its own and that do not disappear when an administration leaves office.

Congress originally gave the National Science Foundation a broader role than the one it now occupies in public debate. The 1950 statute created NSF to support basic research and education, evaluate federal research programs, and help develop national policy for science. Some government-wide coordinating functions later moved closer to the President, contributing to the structure that eventually produced OSTP. NSF became identified primarily with competitive grants, but its statutory responsibilities still extend to assessing the condition and needs of science and engineering and informing national research policy.

That history suggests a practical division of labor. OSTP should remain the President’s science and technology policy office. NSF, working through the National Science Board, should maintain the permanent table for the research enterprise.

Congress should establish a National Research Enterprise Council under the Board. Federal participants would include NIH, DOE, NASA, DOD, NIST, and other agencies whose decisions shape the national research system. Universities, companies, philanthropic funders, nonprofit research institutions, and state and regional leaders should participate alongside them. A small permanent staff would maintain the agenda, gather evidence, organize working groups, and preserve the record between meetings and administrations.

The Council would focus on issues that require joint action but rarely fit cleanly within one agency: scientific facilities, workforce development, regional research capacity, research security, administrative burden, indirect costs, emerging technologies, and the movement of ideas from basic research into industry. It would publish recommendations and ask the responsible agencies to respond. Congress, the White House, and the research community would have a continuing account of which problems had been addressed, which remained unresolved, and where institutional disagreements were blocking action.

The limits should be explicit. The Council would have no authority over individual grants, agency budgets, regulations, or mission priorities. NIH would continue to run health research, DOE its laboratories and energy programs, NASA its space portfolio, and DOD its national security research. NSF’s role would be to structure work across those boundaries and keep it from dissolving when a temporary committee ends.

NSF has its own programs and competes for federal funding. Its credibility would have to come from the design of the Council. Membership should be balanced across agencies, sectors, regions, and fields. Agendas and recommendations should be public, conflicts disclosed, and disagreements recorded. The Council would earn trust by making its process visible and keeping its authority within clearly drawn lines.

The model is already partly visible in the CHIPS and Science Act. Congress directed OSTP to conduct a Quadrennial Science and Technology Review in consultation with the National Science Board, federal agencies, industry, universities, nonprofit organizations, Congress, and other experts. The review is meant to examine the U.S. science and technology enterprise and improve coordination across programs, budgets, assets, policies, and authorities.

A review conducted every four years cannot carry the continuing work needed to produce a serious national strategy. The National Research Enterprise Council could supply that foundation. Its annual work would feed into the quadrennial review, while OSTP would retain responsibility for the administration’s final strategy. The White House would gain a stronger base of analysis and cross-sector engagement. Congress would gain a clearer view of system-wide problems. Agencies would spend less time recreating relationships and reopening questions that previous groups had already examined.

Recent events also show why institutional continuity cannot rest on staggered appointments alone. The removal of all 22 sitting National Science Board members in April 2026 demonstrated how quickly personnel arrangements can be swept aside. The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Slaughter further restricted the use of removal protections for officials exercising executive power. A durable institution now has to depend more heavily on statutory duties, permanent staff, regular reporting, stable funding, and a public record that survives changes in leadership.

Presidents will continue to choose personnel, set priorities, and change policy. The federal science system still needs to retain the relationships, evidence, and accumulated judgment required to govern the research enterprise well. Congress can build that continuity into the work of an institution even when it cannot guarantee the tenure of the people leading it.

The next administration will inherit significantly altered scientific institutions, depleted expertise, and a long list of deferred decisions across scientific domains. It will need people who understand how to use White House authority and move policy through agencies. It should also leave behind a system that does not lose its agenda, relationships, and institutional knowledge whenever those people leave.

OSTP should provide direction from the center of presidential power. The National Research Enterprise Council should maintain the broader work that extends across agencies, sectors, and political cycles.

For more than sixty years, the division of labor between the White House and NSF has remained incomplete. Rebuilding American science policy now requires more than restoring what was damaged. It requires an institutional structure capable of carrying national priorities across administrations and sustaining American scientific strength in a far more competitive world.

References

Donovan, C. (2026, June 1). How to rebuild US science and technology policy from the rubble of Trump 2.0. Tech Policy Press.

Garisto, D. (2026, April 28). Entire NSF science advisory board fired by Trump administration. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01361-7

National Science Board, 42 U.S.C. § 1863.

National Science Foundation Act of 1950, Pub. L. No. 81-507, 64 Stat. 149.

National Science Foundation functions, 42 U.S.C. § 1862.

Quadrennial science and technology review, 42 U.S.C. § 6615b.

Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1962, 76 Stat. 1253.

Trump v. Slaughter, 609 U.S. ___ (2026)

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About the Author

Dr. Michael W. Nestor is a science policy leader and neuroscientist with more than two decades of experience across academia, government, philanthropy, and industry. He served as Board Director for the Government-University-Industry-Philanthropy Research Roundtable (GUIPRR) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, where he worked to strengthen collaboration across national leadership within sectors that together sustain the U.S. research enterprise. As an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the Department of Energy, he worked on biosecurity, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and horizon-scanning for convergent technologies. In industry, he has led scientific engagement at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, helped launch the JLABS site in Washington, DC, and advised venture capital firms on early-stage biotech strategy. As Chief Scientific Officer and founder of Autica Bio, he developed precision therapeutics for autism, using patient-derived brain organoids to model phenotypic variation and enable high-throughput screening for neurodevelopmental conditions. Through his consulting practice, Synapstem, he advises on national science and innovation policy, translational research, and the responsible development of converging technologies across AI, life sciences, and computing. He writes and speaks on anticipatory ethics and the governance of emerging biotechnology, and his current book examines the implications of CRISPR for treating cognitive conditions. He mentors early-career scientists and advocates for commercialization pathways that preserve scientific integrity and give the United States a durable advantage in the global innovation competition.