The ERVA award will support national engineering research visioning and expand the initiative’s focus on stakeholder engagement and measurable impact
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Sept. 14, 2026 — UIDP announced that the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Directorate has awarded a new five-year cooperative agreement to support the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA). The award provides nearly $8 million in projected funding through August 2031.
ERVA brings together leaders from academia, industry, government, national laboratories, and the broader engineering community to identify emerging opportunities and develop strategic research directions with the potential to generate significant national and societal benefits. UIDP administers the initiative with funding from the NSF Directorate for Engineering.
ERVA’s visioning activities convene experts across disciplines and sectors to examine complex challenges, identify critical knowledge and technology gaps, and articulate high-impact, high-reward engineering research opportunities. The resulting reports provide research frameworks for federal agencies, universities, companies, national laboratories, foundations, and other organizations that shape or support the nation’s research enterprise.
“ERVA has demonstrated that the engineering community can be convened with purpose, challenged to think beyond incremental progress, and mobilized to identify research directions with the power to shape the nation’s future as a technology leader,” said Pramod Khargonekar, ERVA principal investigator (PI) and Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. University of California, Irvine. “As the United States confronts intensifying global competition, rapid technological change, urgent national priorities, and expanding opportunities for engineering-led discovery, ERVA is ready to serve as the neutral, agile, and trusted convener that helps the community see farther and act sooner.”
Recent ERVA activities demonstrate the breadth of the work. On Aug. 6, ERVA released Engineering Food Systems to Enable Precision Nutrition, which identifies nine key engineering research priorities to translate biological insights into deployable food-system technologies to enable the infrastructure for precision nutrition. The report, based on the visioning input from a strategic set of experts from industry, academia, government, and nonprofit sectors, addresses engineering priorities that impact how food is grown, processed, packaged, and prepared for the greatest nutritional and societal benefit.
More recently, ERVA investigated the role of engineering research to enable commercial fusion energy. The resulting rapid report, Commercial Fusion Energy: From Ignition to Deployment, was released last week.
Earlier this year, ERVA released the rapid report Wave-Based Computing: Key Engineering Bottlenecks, which identifies six critical areas that must be addressed to move wave-based computing toward real-world applications. And in mid-August, NSF announced a new funding opportunity for research in this cutting-edge topic, Emerging Frontiers In Research and Innovation: Wave-Based Computing.
ERVA’s next visioning event, set for December 2026, will explore engineering research priorities for in-space manufacturing.
“ERVA brings bold, cross-disciplinary, visioning methodology to develop engineering priorities to advance critical and emerging technologies—helping turn research into economic growth, national strength, and public benefit,” Khargonekar said.
“The timing of this renewal could not be more significant,” said Anthony Boccanfuso, ERVA co-PI and president and CEO of UIDP. “OSTP has identified foundational engineering research and stronger collaboration among government, universities, and industry as essential to America’s future technological leadership. ERVA gives the engineering community a proven mechanism to come together across sectors, look beyond today’s research agenda, and identify the breakthroughs the nation will need next.” The new cooperative agreement begins Sept. 1, 2026, and continues through Aug. 31, 2031. Khargonekar will lead the project along with Boccanfuso and co-PIs Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, vice chancellor for research, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Charles Johnson-Bey, professor and chair, electrical and computer engineering, Morgan State University; and Lance Pérez, Fred Hunzeker Dean of Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
To learn more about ERVA, visit ERVAcommunity.org.
About ERVA
The Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) is a neutral convener that helps define future engineering research directions. Funded by the NSF Directorate for Engineering, ERVA is an engaged partnership that enables an array of voices to impact national research priorities. The initiative convenes, catalyzes and enables the engineering community to identify nascent opportunities and priorities for engineering-led innovative, high-impact, cross-domain research that addresses national, global and societal needs. Learn more at ERVAcommunity.org.
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This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award No. 2628201. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.
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