SUPPORTING THE FUTURE OF PALEONTOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS, COLLECTIONS-BASED RESEARCH, AND OUR COLLECTIONS WORKFORCE (Invited Presentation)

Paleontological collections are of critical importance to the discipline as they are the foundational datasets for understanding biodiversity, evolutionary history, and environmental change through time. As such, the National Science Foundation recognizes the importance of maintaining these irreplaceable specimens and their associated data, and ensuring that they are accessible to researchers, educators, and the public. Two National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) reports were released in 2020 that provided specific recommendations of relevance to paleontological collections; “Earth in Time: A Vision for NSF Earth Sciences 2020-2030” and “Biological Collections: Ensuring critical research and education for the 21^st century”. These reports provided crucial community input that has served to inform NSF funding priorities and the development of new initiatives that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. This presentation will include information about current opportunities that support paleontological collections, collection-based research, and our collections workforce. Information will be provided about programmatic funding priorities, including the importance of creating environments that advance belonging, accessibility, justice, equity and inclusion, and opportunities for the paleontological collections community to become further engaged with NSF.