NSF awards $24.5M for AI-ready science data

The National Science Foundation awarded a five-university team a five-year, $24.5 million agreement to expand the National Data Platform into a federated, AI-ready data ecosystem. The NSF announcement says the effort is part of an $83 million investment in integrated data systems; the University of Utah’s project details describe the platform’s work connecting data discovery, access, computing, and AI services across existing research infrastructure. For research teams, the signal is infrastructural rather than model-centric: interoperable provenance and access layers are becoming a prerequisite for turning scientific agents into repeatable workflows, alongside the site’s replication-first AI-scientist pattern.