NSF Just Opened $100 Million for Quantum and Nano Labs — Here Is How to Win a Site

Sixteen universities are about to become the backbone of America's quantum and nanotechnology research infrastructure. The National Science Foundation's new National Quantum and Nanotechnology Infrastructure program — NQNI — will distribute up to $100 million over five years to build a coast-to-coast network of open-access fabrication and characterization facilities. Individual sites can receive up to $2 million per year, with the possibility of a five-year renewal that doubles the total award to $20 million per site.

Letters of intent are due March 16, 2026. Full proposals are due May 14. If your institution has advanced fabrication capabilities and you haven't started your LOI, you're already behind.

As Granted News reported when the program launched, this is NSF's largest single investment in shared research infrastructure since the sunsetting of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure. But the brief announcement only scratched the surface. The solicitation document — NSF 26-505 — reveals a program that is architecturally ambitious, unusually prescriptive about what sites must provide, and designed to reshape how universities, community colleges, and small businesses interact around emerging technology.

Why This Program Exists Now

The timing is not accidental. The United States is in the middle of a multi-front technology competition where quantum computing, advanced semiconductors, and nanoscale manufacturing are strategic assets. The CHIPS and Science Act authorized massive investments in semiconductor manufacturing, but fabrication facilities for research-grade quantum devices and nanomaterials have remained fragmented — scattered across university cleanrooms that charge different rates, serve different communities, and operate under different access models.

NSF's existing National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) network, launched in 2015, provided a template. But NNCI sites operated with relatively modest budgets and focused primarily on nanotechnology. NQNI expands the mission to explicitly include quantum information science and engineering, semiconductors, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, and AI hardware — a much broader technical aperture that reflects how these fields have converged.

The participating NSF directorates tell the story: Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, STEM Education, Biological Sciences, Social/Behavioral/Economic Sciences, and International Science & Engineering. This is not a physics program. It is a national infrastructure play that happens to be housed at NSF.

What NSF Actually Wants

The solicitation describes eight mandatory components for every proposal, and they reveal NSF's priorities with unusual clarity.

Open-access user facilities, not closed labs. Every NQNI site must operate as a user facility open to external researchers — from other universities, from startups, from community colleges, from industry. Fees must be identical for all academic users regardless of institutional affiliation. The site's own faculty research cannot crowd out external users. NSF wants these to function like national labs, not departmental cleanrooms.

Community college partnerships are required, not encouraged. This is one of the most distinctive features. Each site must establish formal partnerships with community colleges to create workforce development pipelines. NSF is explicitly building a system where the technician workforce for quantum and nano fabrication is trained alongside PhD researchers.

Social and ethical implications are a review criterion. Proposals must include a section addressing the societal dimensions of the research their facility will enable. This goes beyond the standard Broader Impacts statement. NSF is asking sites to integrate responsible innovation thinking into their operational model.

Regional coverage matters. The solicitation emphasizes that NQNI should serve "regional innovation ecosystems." NSF will likely avoid funding three sites in the same corridor. Geographic distribution is a factor, which gives institutions outside the traditional coastal research hubs a genuine competitive advantage.

The Money: How Awards Work

Individual sites receive between $500,000 and $2 million per year for five years. That is a floor of $2.5 million and a ceiling of $10 million per site in the initial period. A separate Coordinating Office award — approximately $700,000 per year — will manage the network, maintain a shared website, organize training, and coordinate across sites.

The total program budget is $12 million to $20 million annually across all sites, supporting 8 to 16 awards. Simple math: if NSF funds 16 sites at $20 million per year total, the average is $1.25 million per site. If they fund 8 sites, the average climbs to $2.5 million. The range suggests NSF hasn't decided whether to go broad and shallow or narrow and deep — the quality of proposals will likely determine the outcome.

Cost sharing is explicitly prohibited. Do not volunteer institutional matching funds. NSF will reject proposals that include voluntary committed cost sharing.

One critical restriction: NQNI funds cannot pay for construction, building renovation, or major equipment acquisition. The assumption is that your institution already has the physical infrastructure. If you need to build a cleanroom, this is not the program. If you have a cleanroom that needs staff, training programs, and operating support to serve a national user base, NQNI is exactly right.

What Makes a Competitive Proposal

Having reviewed the solicitation's review criteria and structure, several patterns emerge for what will separate winning proposals from the pack.

Existing capabilities are table stakes. NQNI is not funding the construction of new facilities. It is funding the transformation of existing university facilities into nationally accessible infrastructure. If your cleanroom already serves 200 external users per year, you can make a compelling case. If your cleanroom serves only your department, you need to explain a credible transition plan.

The best proposals will show demand, not just supply. NSF's review criteria emphasize the "quality of programs for outreach, knowledge dissemination, educational, research, and workforce development experiences." Translation: it is not enough to list your tools. You need to demonstrate that a community of users needs those tools and currently cannot access them.

Faculty research strength matters. NSF explicitly evaluates the "strength of internal research programs and management structure." A site director needs to be a leading researcher, not just an administrator. The underlying faculty research program provides the intellectual foundation that attracts users and trains students. Weak research programs produce weak user facilities.

The External Advisory Board cannot be named in the proposal. This is an unusual requirement. You must describe the structure and function of your advisory board, but you cannot list specific members. NSF wants to evaluate your governance model, not your rolodex.

Letters of Collaboration are capped at 10. Each must be one page maximum. This forces conciseness but also means you need to choose your collaborators strategically. Ten letters from other universities in your state mean less than five letters from industry partners, three from community colleges, and two from institutions in underserved regions.

The LOI: What to Include

The required Letter of Intent is more detailed than a typical NSF LOI. It must include:

• A title beginning with "NQNI:"
• The PI's name, affiliation, and area of expertise
• A vision statement with key components and goals
• A list of all Senior/Key Personnel with their areas of expertise
• Estimated budgets for each year and for each partner institution

This is essentially a structured pre-proposal. NSF uses LOIs to organize review panels, so skipping the LOI means your full proposal will not be reviewed. The March 16 deadline is hard.

Technical Capabilities That Will Win

The solicitation lists research areas that NQNI sites should support, and the list reads like a roadmap of where U.S. technology strategy is heading:

• Quantum dots and scalable qubits — the building blocks of quantum processors
• 2D materials for quantum devices — graphene, hexagonal boron nitride, transition metal dichalcogenides
• Heterogeneous integration systems — combining different materials and device types on a single platform
• Bio-inspired materials and sensors — where biotech meets nanofabrication
• Energy conversion and storage devices — batteries, solar cells, thermoelectrics at the nanoscale
• AI hardware and neuromorphic computing — custom chips that mimic neural architectures

Sites that can cover multiple areas from this list are more competitive than those that specialize narrowly. But breadth without depth is a red flag. The strongest proposals will show deep capability in two or three areas with credible plans to expand.

The Reverse Site Visit

Proposals that advance past initial review will participate in virtual reverse site visits — essentially oral defenses where the team presents to reviewers and answers questions. This is where leadership quality, team cohesion, and operational realism get tested. PIs who cannot clearly articulate their user facility model in a live conversation will struggle regardless of how polished their written proposal looks.

Strategic Implications for the Field

NQNI represents a philosophical shift in how NSF supports experimental research. Rather than funding individual investigators to buy equipment, NSF is building shared infrastructure that lowers the barrier to entry for the entire research community. A startup in Boise can access the same electron-beam lithography system as a Stanford lab. A community college student in rural Appalachia can learn cleanroom techniques at a NQNI site and walk into a semiconductor job.

The program also creates a competitive dynamic among universities. Winning a NQNI site becomes a reputational signal — a marker that your institution is a national leader in quantum and nano fabrication. For universities competing for faculty, students, and industry partnerships, that signal carries real value.

For researchers who are not PIs on a NQNI proposal but work in quantum, nano, or related fields, this program matters because it will dramatically expand where you can get fabrication and characterization work done at reasonable cost. Once sites are operational — likely by mid-2027 — the entire landscape of accessible experimental infrastructure shifts.

If you're working on a proposal, the clock is running. LOIs are due March 16. The full proposal deadline is May 14. And tools like Granted can help you identify complementary funding opportunities to support the research programs that will make your NQNI site indispensable.