Senators Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) have recently launched theAmerican Science Acceleration Project (ASAP)– a bipartisan initiative to dramatically increase the pace of scientific and technological discovery with the goal of “making American science 10 times faster by 2030.” ASAP plans to leverage emerging technologies like AI to accelerate breakthroughs across the scientific disciplines including "biotechnology, materials science, medical technology, energy, agriculture", among others. They are now collecting feedback from the public via a Request for Information (RFI) to inform the initiative’s work. Respondents may answer any number of questions and are encouraged to consider both legislative and non-legislative solutions. The RFI seeks input on a high-level strategy for the initiative as a whole, as well as specific challenges faced by the research community across five core areas known as “ASAP Pillars”, related to data, compute, artificial intelligence, collaboration, and process. There are five main questions provided under each pillar:
- How can America build the world’s most powerful scientific data ecosystem to accelerate American science?
- What does the U.S. need to do to ensure its researchers have access to enough computing resources to power new breakthroughs?
- What should America do to take full advantage of AI capabilities to dramatically accelerate the pace of science in both the private sector and the public sector, and what innovations should we target in the foundations of AI itself?
- How can we radically increase the scale, speed, and impact of scientific collaboration across disciplines, institutions, and sectors?
- In order to cut the time from discovery to deployment by a factor of 10, what changes are needed in the process of scientific innovation, such as in the regulatory ecosystem, scientific funding models, education and workforce pipelines, and the resources that constitute the scientific supply chain?”
Additional questions to be addressed under each pillar are provided in the RFI's appendix, however responders can address any challenge or opportunity related to these pillars, with the goal of accelerating technological innovation in mind.
The RFI also includes 5 cross-cutting questions to inform ASAP, which inquire ways the US research enterprise can accelerate scientific innovation and what actions the federal government, industry, and academia should take to reach this end; what kinds of research infrastructure is needed to boost productivity; how can novel scientific workflow models leverage AI to streamline processes, while ensuring scientists remain at the center of discovery; how should the success of ASAP be measured; and what "objective, quantifiable" metrics for critical innovations are necessary to guide ASAP.
Responses can be sent to ASAP@heinrich.senate.gov and ASAP@rounds.senate.gov, and will be confidential to the Senators’ offices. The offices may reach out for additional details and questions on responses. The deadline to respond is June 30, 2025, however responses may be updated afterwards. Feedback from this RFI may inform future legislation expected to be introduced in this Congress, aiming to accelerate science across several domains. Additional details and questions can be found in links above and the attached document.