Two dozen mostly rural states are set to receive a greater share of federal research money from the recently enacted science and technology funding law as lawmakers, experts and researchers push to support talented scientists outside of major research hubs such as those in California, Massachusetts and New York. The law authorized $102 billion over five years for the National Science Foundation. About 20 percent of it goes to a separate funding track that since 1979 has been meant to steer money to researchers and scientists from universities in rural and low-income states that don’t have the same size and global reach as California’s Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or New York’s Columbia University.
