22. Enabling Accelerated Research in Times of Need: The National Science Foundation’s Response to COVID-19 in 2020

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has a history of supporting urgently needed, ephemeral data collection for research on major disruptive events, often addressing first-order impacts. NSF has communicated the availability of rapidly accessible research funds through Dear Colleague Letters (DCLs) 14 times from 2010 to 2020 to address health hazards, earthquakes, hurricanes, and man-made hazardous events in and out of the United States. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, three Dear Colleague Letters were published, and approximately USD 162.4 million was distributed to researchers for 991 unique NSF projects in fiscal year (FY) 2020, as considered in this chapter. The research community led the charge in defining the research agenda to address the pandemic, with the first COVID-19-related proposals coming into NSF months before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. To understand how the research community prioritized the initial research topics to address the pandemic, we qualitatively evaluated FY 2020-funded projects to reveal 11 categories which includ (1) biology of the virus and zoonosis, (2) human infection, (3) transmission, (4) effects on and tools for healthcare systems, (5) human distancing behavior, (6) public policy, (7) risk perception, (8) information access and misinformation, (9) supply chain and food security, (10) education, and (11) impact on ecosystems, environment, and infrastructure. Awarded projects address a broad range of topics, many of which included geospatial approaches, with overlap across categories. One key observation is the cross-societal implications and inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives emphasized across projects. The response to COVID-19 reinforced the need to bring diverse researchers and disciplines together to solve interwoven challenges during times of rapid change and urgent need.