About Us

The NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR) is a nationwide research and education effort administered by the National Science Foundation. The mission of NSF EPSCoR is to help the NSF to "strengthen research and education in science and engineering throughout the United States and to avoid undue concentration of such research and education." States and territories which in recent years have received less than 0.75% of the NSF's total national funding are eligible for EPSCoR funding. 28 states and territories (see map) currently meet this criteria.

Alaska has had an NSF EPSCoR program since 2001. Alaska’s main source of EPSCoR funding is its 5-year “Track-1” project, entitled “Fire and Ice: Navigating Variability in Boreal Wildfire Regimes and Subarctic Coastal Ecosystems.” Alaskan scientists also currently receive NSF EPSCoR funding for multiple other projects, including Track-2 awards for multijurisdictional research projects and Track-4 awards for individual research efforts.

The U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Defense also run EPSCoR programs, and the National Institutes of Health run similar programs called COBRE and INBRE. In addition to Alaska NSF EPSCoR, federal EPSCoR/INBRE funding to the University of Alaska goes to support the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, Alaska NASA EPSCoR, the Center for Alaska Native Health Research,  Alaska INBRE and BLaST.