Grant Award Summary

The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded $336,177 to the American Institute of Physics Incorporated on June 1, 2026, under the Promotion of the Humanities Division of Preservation and Access program (CFDA 45.149). This three-year initiative, extending through May 31, 2029, will establish a national fellowship program designed to strengthen institutional capacity in documenting, preserving, and providing access to records and narratives of innovation in science and engineering. The fellowship will train and develop a cohort of early and mid-career cultural heritage professionals to build national capacity and refine practices for collecting, preserving, and processing born-digital scientific records that are critical for future historical and philosophical scholarship.

The primary deliverable is a structured training and education initiative that will enhance the nation's ability to manage the digital scientific enterprise. By establishing collaborative practices and developing professional expertise among cultural heritage workers, the program addresses the urgent need to modernize preservation methodologies as scientific documentation increasingly originates in digital formats. The work will be performed in Maryland and will generate refined standards and practices for enabling use and access to archival records of the scientific enterprise, ensuring that historians, philosophers of science, and researchers can effectively engage with and understand the evolution of American scientific innovation.