| It’s a mixture of both top down priorities from government and bottom up opportunities from scientists. I suspect you know this and are being sarcastic because that’s cool. But I’ll describe it anyway. The NSF, DARPA, DOE, NASA, etc etc have research program offices that set priorities. For example let’s have a DARPA program that pushes new stealth materials, or an NSF program on quantum computing (possibly partly motivated by another three-letter agency). The program managers understand the state of the art AND what the government (as the agent of the People) could really use Real Soon Now, or down the road for big bets.
They write a Call for Proposals that describes what they’d like to see. Researchers watch out for CFPs they might be able to contribute to, and propose a project where their work could help. Sometimes the fit is easy, and sometimes the researcher will modulate their work to fit better, because they want support from somewhere. The proposals compete for a share of the targeted pot of money. This is how the government influences basic research, while still giving researchers the opportunity to propose novel stuff the government hasn’t thought of. It’s the system that built the Internet and CRISPR, RNA vaccines and the laser, microelectronics and IVF. |