The U.S. National Science Foundation will spend $39.9 million on eight four-year research collaborations spanning 16 EPSCoR jurisdictions, under the Focused EPSCoR Collaborations (FEC) track of the Research Infrastructure Improvement Program. The Fiscal Year 2026 awards, announced by the agency, target agriculture, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, environmental monitoring, critical mineral recovery, coastal resilience, snow science, semiconductors and quantum materials.

For R&D managers in eligible states and territories, the FEC mechanism is worth tracking: it funds investigator-driven teams drawn from two or more EPSCoR jurisdictions — regions that historically received a smaller share of federal research funding — and NSF explicitly frames the awards as instruments for building durable partnerships, STEM workforce capacity and shared infrastructure that outlast a single grant cycle. Each project below pairs institutions across state lines, which means shared instrumentation, datasets and personnel rather than single-lab funding.

The eight awards

Boosting Tolerance to Water Stress in Rice and Wheat Using Mycorrhizal Inoculants. Arkansas State University, the University of Kansas Center for Research, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Kansas State University will combine plant physiology, genomics and AI to identify mycorrhizal fungi that improve drought tolerance in rice and wheat. NSF lists the goals as boosted drought tolerance, food security and farmer profitability, alongside workforce development and stakeholder engagement with the agricultural community.

Converging AI, Biomechanics, and Genomics to Engineer Lodging Resilient Field Crops. A consortium led by the University of Idaho, with Clemson University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center, takes on stalk lodging — a persistent threat to global food security. The program integrates engineering, AI, biomechanics and genomics, with deliverables that include deployable phenotyping technologies, open-source datasets and analytical tools.

Snow STORE: Snow Science and Technology for Operations, Research, and Economic Development in Northern New England. The University of Vermont and the University of New Hampshire, with subawards to Vermont State Colleges, the University of Maine Farmington, the University of Maine and the Mount Washington Observatory, will build a regional snow monitoring network integrating observations, modeling and forecasting tools. The decision-support outputs connect researchers with ski areas and state agencies serving the winter economy.

Transformative Bioprocessing and AI-Driven Frameworks for Sustainable Critical Mineral Recovery. The University of Alaska Anchorage, Montana Technological University and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, with the University of Wyoming as subawardee, will establish a "Smart Bio-Refinery" framework using AI-enabled microbial recovery systems. The stated target is U.S. dependence on foreign sources of rare earth elements, integrating microbiology, mineralogy, AI and process engineering.

EcoCARE: A Use-inspired Ecological-Economic Collaboratory for Advancing Coastal Wetland Restoration and Resilience. The University of Rhode Island and Louisiana State University, with subawards to Roger Williams University, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and LSU Health Science Center, will build an EcoCARE Hub and integrated web portal. Work packages include molecular biomonitoring, AI-enhanced modeling, wetland valuation and restoration financing.

AI-Enabled Environmental Surveillance of Microbial and Chemical Threats to Food Production Systems. The University of Hawaii and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will develop surveillance technologies to detect and quantify pathogens and contaminants affecting aquaculture and livestock, with workforce development in AI and biotechnology built into the scope.

Spin Control via Topology, Symmetry and Dimensionality. West Virginia University Research Corporation and the University of Delaware will investigate low-energy ways to control electron spin — the property underlying memory, sensing and quantum information technologies. The research focuses on altermagnets, a newly discovered class of magnetic materials that respond to light, and on light-controlled spin in nanoscale semiconductor structures.

Plastic-based Nano-Systems for High Throughput Multi-omic Biological Studies. The University of Kansas Center for Research, with Louisiana State University and Southern University and A&M College as subawardees, will develop nanoscale tools and a mixed-scale, single-molecule platform for analyzing biological molecules, starting with proteins. The platform is designed to be reconfigurable for other biological polymers and will use AI for manufacturing and single-molecule identification.

What the numbers do and don't say

NSF has not broken down the $39.9 million across the eight projects in this announcement, and the award descriptions are agency statements of intent rather than measured results — outputs such as deployable phenotyping tools, open datasets or a functioning snow network remain projections until the four-year projects report. What is concrete now is the structure: named lead institutions, subaward networks reaching into small colleges and state agencies, and a mandate that every collaboration cut across at least two EPSCoR jurisdictions. Institutions in EPSCoR-eligible jurisdictions planning multi-state proposals should watch the next FEC solicitation cycle, since NSF positions the program as a recurring channel for exactly that kind of interjurisdictional infrastructure building.