Rounds, Heinrich Seeking Public Input on Initiative to Accelerate Advancements in American Science (ASAP)

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) today released a Request for Information (RFI) for the American Science Acceleration Project (ASAP), a bipartisan initiative aimed at making advancements in U.S. science ten times faster by 2030. The RFI invites researchers, innovators, businesses, government agencies and the public to share proposals that will equip American scientists and stakeholders with next-generation data, computing and artificial-intelligence capabilities while removing unnecessary barriers to innovation.

"The United States has always faced grand challenges, from building the interstate highway system to landing on the moon," said Rounds. "Today, we face a new imperative: creating a superhighway for science that lets our researchers cure cancer, harness fusion energy and defend our country from both physical and cyber threats in record time. Creating a centralized system that involves input from the experts and the public is the first step in turning that vision into reality."

"It's time to unleash a new era of American discovery - one where we cure cancers, power our grid with fusion energy, and widely deploy superconductors," said Heinrich. "With the American Science Acceleration Project, we're setting out to make U.S. science ten times faster by 2030. To get there, we need bold ideas from every corner of the country. This is our moment to dream big, remove outdated barriers, and build the tools that will define the next century of innovation."

BACKGROUND:

American innovations routinely take a decade or more to move from laboratory discovery to products that improve lives. Emerging AI-driven research methods have demonstrated 10- to 50-fold improvements in drug design, materials screening and clean-energy development, yet access to the requisite data, compute and regulatory agility remains sparse. ASAP seeks to match the scale of the 1950s interstate build-out with a 21st-century investment in scientific infrastructure so the nation can:

1. Bring life-saving therapies to patients in months, not years.
2. Connect net-positive fusion power and next generation nuclear to the grid before 2030.
3. Deploy affordable superconductors and materials that revolutionize energy and transportation.

Specifically, the RFI invites comment on:

1. DATA - Creating secure, interoperable platforms that house the world's largest collection of AI-ready, consented scientific data.
2. COMPUTING - Making sure U.S. researchers have unrivaled access to advanced computing, networking and energy infrastructure.
3. AI - Developing scientific artificial intelligence "copilots" that accelerate innovation and discovery-and keep scientists at the heart of the scientific process.
4. COLLABORATION - Unlocking cross-disciplinary teamwork and tapping wells of talent across the nation.
5. PROCESSES - Streamlining regulatory pathways and adopting AI-enabled testing protocols to speed time-to-market while raising the bar for safety and establishing clear metrics for measuring success.

The comment window is now open for 60 days. The feedback received will guide ASAP legislation to be introduced this Congress.

Click HERE to read the full RFI and submission instructions.

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