NSF Funding: Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced in 2016 its set of “Big Ideas,” long term research areas that it felt deserved future investment and attention. The “Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier” is one of those Big Ideas, supporting cross-disciplinary approaches to advancing knowledge in this area. Psychological science has much to contribute to this topic and can help develop a fundamental understanding and advance the future of work.

NSF describes work as the “mental or physical activity to achieve tangible benefit such as income, profit, or community welfare.” Along with promoting multidisciplinary research projects, NSF also has the specific objective of promoting a deeper basic understanding of the interdependent human-technology partnership to advance societal needs. NSF also mentions interest in understanding how humans learn new skills to interact with technology and methods for improving diverse participation in the workforce as examples of the basic understanding the solicitation aims to support. See the full solicitation for more information.

NSF especially encourages researchers from the behavioral sciences to apply for this opportunity. The deadline for applications is March 23, 2021.

A brief description of the opportunity can be found here.

The full funding solicitation, “Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier: Core Research (FW-HTF),” can be found here.