In response to a request for information on accelerating the American scientific enterprise from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the NSC Alliance provided comments emphasizing the need to recognize natural history collections as essential national research infrastructure and provide sustained, inflation-adjusted federal investment to support their care, digitization, and data integration.
The Alliance warns that funding disruptions and staffing shortfalls can permanently compromise these irreplaceable assets and urges a coordinated national strategy for strategic collecting and long-term biodiversity monitoring.
The comments also emphasize the role of collections as engines for advancing innovation in artificial intelligence. “Specimen-derived data are inherently trusted, reproducible, and verifiable, making them well suited for AI-enabled discovery when combined with continued investment in digitization, data standards, georeferencing, imaging, and genomic integration,” the Alliance argues. “Because collections data are largely open source and well curated, they are poised for responsible use in AI training, hypothesis generation, and predictive modeling across the life sciences. Strategic growth of collections and their associated digital assets will further enable the testing, validation, and refinement of AI-driven models.”