It was a landmark week for science in the Trump administration. On July 22, the White House unveiled the first wave of grants from the Genesis Mission — a $5 billion+ initiative billed as "comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project" — alongside a sweeping report from Chief Science Adviser Michael Kratsios calling for a fundamental rethinking of how the US funds research.

The Genesis Mission: AI for Everything

Some 5,000 teams applied for Genesis funding. Officials announced about 280 winning projects in a first phase, each receiving 9-month grants of $500,000 to $750,000 to apply AI to problems spanning the US power grid, automated laboratories, biofuel production, and more. Successful teams can apply for a second phase: a three-year programme involving millions in annual funding.

"I was very, very, very happy to be chosen because it was incredibly competitive," said Jeremy Zucker, a computational scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory whose project will model algal growth in ponds to maximize biofuel production using AI.

'Science: A New Golden Age'

Kratsios's report, titled Science: A New Golden Age, calls for shifting funding away from "legacy institutions" such as universities toward individual scientists through programmes like "golden tickets" — giving grant reviewers the power to override peer-review decisions to fund high-risk proposals.

"Too much of our research enterprise has come to serve itself rather than the scientists within it," Kratsios wrote. At a House Science Committee hearing, he argued that US science is stagnating and needs to be rethought.

Political Reactions

Republicans on the committee broadly supported the vision. Democrats sharply criticized the administration's cuts to science budgets and its push to take political control of grant awards. "You aren't launching us into 'the golden age of innovation.' You're sending us back to the Stone Age," said Representative Gabe Amo (D-RI).

NSF Pulls $300M from Core Divisions

Nature has learned that the National Science Foundation has pulled back $300 million from its mathematics/physical sciences and computer science divisions, rescinding or cutting 150 already-peer-reviewed proposals. Staff say the money is likely going to a new White House programme called Grand Research Challenges — covering the future of intelligence, quantum phenomena, advanced materials, and biological design.

What It Means

The Genesis Mission represents the most aggressive US government bet yet on AI as a catalyst for scientific discovery. But the funding shifts have scientists divided — celebrating the ambition while worrying about what gets left behind.

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