Science Magazine

The National Science Foundation just had a big reorganization. Here are five things to know

Divisions and rotators disappear as more career staff become supervisors

by Jeffrey Mervis

Editor’s note: The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), one of the government’s major research funders, is undergoing major changes under President Donald Trump. This story, the second of a two-part series, examines recent changes to NSF’s structure. The first story focuses on changes to its process for reviewing grant proposals.

Earlier this month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a major restructuring that left many scientists wondering what the changes at the $9 billion funding agency will mean. To find out, more than 1500 people logged onto an 18 December office hour hosted by NSF’s biology directorate. The unusually large Zoom audience for a monthly get-together was hoping for clarity on rumors that NSF would no longer be supporting certain types of research and that the White House would be calling the shots at the agency.

Senior leaders of the biology directorate—one of NSF’s eight major research units—sought to assuage their worst fears, telling them NSF remained committed to funding the best science. But what listeners heard was only part of the story. Here are five things researchers might not have gleaned from that discussion or from the sparse information NSF has posted on its website about the realignment, which went into effect on 15 December.

Why is NSF making these changes now?

The impetus for change was a directive from the White House Office of Personnel Management enforcing existing rules requiring supervisors to be federal employees and have no more than 10 people reporting to them. For decades, NSF had managed to sidestep those rules and permitted rotators, people on loan for a few years from universities, to be supervisors, with some managing 20 or more people.

Under President Donald Trump, NSF has now fallen in line by promoting career program officers into supervisory roles at all levels of the organization. It made room for them by eliminating three-quarters of its 350 rotator positions, most of whom were serving as program officers. That cut also allowed NSF to significantly reduce the size of its 1700-member staff in response to another White House order.

Tighter White House control

You need to squint to see it, but the new organizational chart contains the clearest evidence yet that the Trump administration has seized control of an agency that has historically been mostly free of White House interference. It shows that both NSF’s Office of Legislative and Public Affairs (OLPA) and its Office of the General Counsel (OGC) now report to the chief management officer (CMO) rather than to the director.

The CMO is a relatively new position, created by then–NSF Director Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan in July 2024 and held by Micah Cheatham, an experienced government financial manager. Until Trump returned to the White House, Cheatham oversaw the “back shop,” NSF’s term for the budget, grants management, and human resources units. But as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began to focus on NSF, prompting Panchanathan to resign, Cheatham’s role expanded to become the chief enforcer of presidential executive orders and White House policy directives.

OLPA and OGC traditionally served as mediators between NSF, an independent agency, and both Congress and the White House. But the new alignment robs them of that authority. As one former OLPA senior manager puts it, “We were the eyes and ears of the director, and our mission was to carry out his or her agenda. I don’t think the [next] director will be well-served by having it levels removed from his office.”

What does the new structure look like?

NSF has also decided to dissolve the divisions that served as operating units within each directorate. Most were named for fields within a particular discipline. The math and physical sciences directorate, for example, had divisions for astronomy, chemistry, materials research, and physics.

Instead of divisions, directorates are now comprised of smaller units called sections. At the moment, some are simply labeled “A” or “B,” according to an internal organization chart, a move designed to allow their supervisors to oversee an acceptable number of “reports.”

In many directorates, these smaller units are being clumped together to address broader thematic areas. For example, the biology directorate has created three supersections called foundations of life, living systems, and bioinnovation and infrastructure. The new labels are not far removed from the names of its previous four divisions.

NSF says the new management structure is flatter. Is it?

NSF’s one-paragraph statement on the realignment says the changes “reduce the number of layers, which allows the agency to more effectively interface with our staff.” But the organizational chart tells a different story.

The former leaders of each directorate, called assistant directors, previously reported directly to the NSF director. Now they report to the chief science officer, Simon Malcomber, who in turn reports to the director. Malcomber, an evolutionary biologist, joined NSF in 2012 as a program officer and has moved up the ranks.

The top boxes on the NSF organizational chart are currently empty. Panchanathan, a Trump appointee, resigned in April. His departure led to promotions for two veteran career administrators: His chief of staff, Brian Stone, a former logistics manager for polar programs, now functions as acting director, and Rebecca Keiser, formerly head of NSF’s research security shop, is now acting chief of staff. The organizational chart continues to show a deputy director, although that Senate-confirmed position has been vacant since 2014.

What happened to the assistant directors?

In July, NSF announced each directorate will be run by what it calls a directorate head, who will be a career employee. The assistant directors who previously managed the directorate were shifted into an advisory role and are no longer involved in hiring, approving grants, or other management duties. The change makes it likely the position of assistant director will ultimately cease to exist.

In biology, for example, biophysical chemist Susan Marqusee, a rotator from the University of California, Berkeley, has ceded control of the $800 million directorate to Theresa Good. Marqusee has almost 2 years left in what is normally a 4-year stint as assistant director. When she leaves, it’s unlikely NSF will name a successor. (That has already happened in the Directorate for Geosciences, where the most recent assistant director, geochemist Alexandra Isern, retired in December 2024 after 23 years at NSF.)

At NSF’s newest directorate—Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships—the agency simply converted its assistant director, Erwin Gianchandani, to a directorate head. A computer scientist who joined NSF in 2012, Gianchandani has another longtime NSF employee, Gracie Narcho, serving as his deputy.