The National Science Foundation, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia | Photo Credit: Maria B. Barnes/National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a federal agency that funds billions of dollars of science research yearly across a wide variety of fields. However, a new study has found that white scientists have consistently higher NSF funding rates than their non-white counterparts, who are disproportionately shut out of these often career-changing funding opportunities.

Contrary to the prevalent narrative where Asian Americans dominate United States STEM fields and don’t face academic challenges, scientists of Asian descent actually have the lowest NSF success rates, at about 20 percent below the overall rate. The study also showed that Black researchers are funded at below average rates. In contrast, white researchers are funded at higher rates than average. These systemic racial disparities in NSF funding were published in a paper for eLife Journal, for which EPSS Professor Aradhna Tripati was co-author.

Read more about the study and its implications in Science and in The New York Times:

https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-grant-decisions-reflect-systemic-racism-study-argues

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/science/asian-scientists-nsf-funding.html