Over the past year, Atlas Research has worked with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to supports its $28 billion research award portfolio. Atlas’ efficient, risk-based approach to monitoring award recipients also helps at-risk recipients recognize and address operational issues that could affect their performance. So everyone wins: NSF, researchers, and the nation that counts on them to drive scientific discovery and engineering education.
NSF provides more than 11,000 new research awards each year to 1800 academic and private research organizations of all sizes, working across the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Each organization must meet federal requirements for operational performance. Atlas conducts an annual award portfolio risk assessment to identify organizations that need additional business assistance.
Atlas experts then conduct reviews of awardee practices in areas such as general management, operational controls, and regulatory compliance to guide award recipients toward best practices. This strategic, structural approach helps recipients well beyond the term of their current NSF awards – it ensures that the recipients will better administer all federal research funding well into the future.
“Supporting NSF enables us to work directly with the U.S. academic research community to verify that they have appropriate operational controls in place to win and manage NSF research awards," said Ricardo Roques, Manager. "This demonstrates to Congress and the country that NSF is prudently conducting its critical mission of funding leading-edge scientific research in the U.S.”