Super Intelligence in Federal Grant Applications: NIH, NSF & DOE Guide

University sponsored research offices and principal investigators are fielding urgent questions about whether active research awards require retroactive terminology amendments following the issuance of Executive Order 14434. The order does not require changes to active grants, and new Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) may use the new term; it does not change how applications are evaluated. Understanding the legal scope of the directive prevents proposal errors while preserving the technical integrity of peer-reviewed research.

The administrative foundation for this terminology change took effect on September 29, 2026, when the White House issued Executive Order 14434, titled "Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence." Under Section 2(a) of the order, executive departments and agencies are directed, to the maximum extent permitted by law, to use "Super Intelligence" and the abbreviation "SI" in place of "Artificial Intelligence" and "AI" in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents, and other non-statutory documents within the executive branch. Section 1 establishes an administrative policy that executive agencies will not acknowledge the usage of earlier terms in applicable settings.

For university grant administrators and faculty researchers, the bare abbreviation SI introduces immediate communication hazards. Outside the context of Executive Order 14434, SI also has other meanings, such as the International System of Units. To prevent ambiguity during scientific peer review and administrative screening, grant writers and sponsored project teams should spell out "Super Intelligence (SI)" on first appearance across project abstracts, specific aims, and narrative sections.

The operational baseline across federal research solicitations is clear:

In federal grant applications, Super Intelligence represents the executive agency nomenclature for artificial intelligence research and computing workflows, while Section 2(b) of Executive Order 14434 states that nothing in that section requires the alteration of previously awarded grants and peer-reviewed agreements.

The legal standard governing this vocabulary is set forth in Section 3(a) of Executive Order 14434:

"For purposes of this order, and except where otherwise provided by law, the terms 'Super Intelligence' and 'SI' mean the technologies and systems encompassed by the term 'artificial intelligence' as defined in section 9401(3) of title 15, United States Code."

That statutory provision, 15 U.S.C. 9401(3), was enacted by Congress in the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020:

"The term 'artificial intelligence' means a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments."

Because Section 3(a) incorporates 15 U.S.C. 9401(3) directly, federal Super Intelligence and artificial intelligence name the exact same systems in federal usage today. The statutory definition focuses entirely on functional capabilities, such as predictive models, automated decision support, computer vision, and natural language processing. It establishes no cognitive autonomy benchmark or superhuman threshold.

This statutory grounding separates federal policy from computer science research concepts:

• Federal Super Intelligence (two capitalized words, abbreviated as SI) is an administrative label for existing operational software and computational pipelines meeting 15 U.S.C. 9401(3).

• Research superintelligence (one compound word, commonly abbreviated as ASI for artificial superintelligence) is a hypothetical future system exceeding human expert capabilities across virtually all domains, which does not exist today. Commercial research laboratories, including Meta Superintelligence Labs, Microsoft's MAI Superintelligence Team, and Safe Superintelligence Inc., identify artificial superintelligence as an aspirational research target.

Under Section 3(b), the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology submits proposed legislative language for a federal definition of Super Intelligence to the President within 60 days of the order, which falls on November 28, 2026. That is an advisory proposal to the President, not an enacted statutory definition. As of October 2026, no statutory definition of Super Intelligence exists. What the proposal says, and whether anything will be enacted by Congress, remains unknown.

University researchers must also observe the legal boundaries established in Section 4(c) of Executive Order 14434. The text provides that the order creates no right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its agencies, officers, or any other person. The order directs executive agencies in their internal administrative practices, not private universities or non-profit research institutions.

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Section 2(a) applies to the agencies that write funding notices, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE). NSF, for example, says on its Super Intelligence page that it is working to update its communications to use the term as directed.

Each agency operates under distinct statutory authorizations, review mechanisms, and submission systems. Understanding how each agency implements the executive order maintains proposal responsiveness while avoiding scientific overreach during peer review.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

NIH awards billions in biomedical and behavioral research through competitive mechanisms such as R01 research project grants, R21 exploratory grants, and U01 cooperative agreements. Solicitations appear as Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) published in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts and on Grants.gov.

Under Section 2(a), new NOFOs from NIH institutes, such as the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), may use Super Intelligence (SI) where they would have said AI.

NIH applications undergo rigorous evaluation by Scientific Review Groups (SRGs), commonly known as study sections. For due dates since January 25, 2025, NIH reviews most research project grants, including R01, R21 and U01, on three factors: Importance of the Research (Significance and Innovation), Rigor and Feasibility (Approach), and Expertise and Resources (Investigators and Environment).

Biomedical reviewers look for concrete experimental rigor and clinical relevance. If a proposal claims to deploy speculative superintelligence, reviewers will question the investigator's scientific premise and methodology. In the Specific Aims and Project Summary, applicants should mirror the NOFO's Super Intelligence terminology to confirm responsiveness. In the Research Strategy (Significance, Innovation, Approach), applicants should detail the precise algorithmic frameworks, such as convolutional neural networks, transformer models, or statistical Bayesian classifiers, and cite 15 U.S.C. 9401(3).

National Science Foundation (NSF)

The NSF supports fundamental scientific inquiry and engineering across directorates such as Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Biological Sciences (BIO), and Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS). Solicitations, program descriptions and Dear Colleague Letters (DCLs) are published on nsf.gov, and proposals are submitted through Research.gov or Grants.gov.

NSF proposals are judged on two merit review criteria: Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. New CISE solicitations, such as those for foundational machine learning, automated reasoning and the National AI Research Institutes, may use Super Intelligence phrasing.

When preparing the 15-page Project Description, investigators should link the agency's Super Intelligence terminology to foundational computing theory. Reviewers evaluate algorithmic complexity, convergence proofs, computational scaling bounds, and data validation protocols. Mirroring SI in the Overview section of the Project Summary aligns with program goals, while grounding the technical approach in established mathematical formulations satisfies the Intellectual Merit evaluation standard.

Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science

The DOE Office of Science runs high-performance computing (HPC) user facilities, including the exascale systems at Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories and the NERSC center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Through programs like Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) and Basic Energy Sciences (BES), the DOE funds scientific machine learning, foundation models for scientific discovery, and automated experimental beamline controls.

New DOE funding announcements may use Super Intelligence vocabulary for computational initiatives, materials discovery and fusion energy research. Office of Science merit review weighs scientific and technical merit, the appropriateness of the proposed method, the competency of personnel and adequacy of resources, and the reasonableness of the budget.

Investigators should distinguish between scalable scientific models and frontier lab superintelligence. Highlighting distributed training scalability, memory management across GPU clusters, and alignment with 15 U.S.C. 9401(3) provides the technical specificity DOE evaluators require.

The following table summarizes how each agency implements terminology across funding notices and review workflows:

University faculty and sponsored project administrators have expressed widespread concern that active federal awards might require formal contract modifications or revised project titles. Section 2(b) of Executive Order 14434 states that nothing in that section requires the alteration of historical and active federal instruments.

The text of Section 2(b) states:

"Nothing in this section requires the alteration of previously issued regulations, Presidential actions, contracts, grants, or other historical documents."

Section 2(b) states that nothing in that section requires the alteration of active awards across the federal research enterprise:

Active Awards and Multi-Year Grant Increments

Existing research grants, including multi-year NIH R01 awards, NSF CAREER grants, and DOE cooperative agreements awarded prior to the executive order, remain operative under their original terms. Principal investigators do not need to submit project modification requests, formal scope change requests, or revised scopes of work to their assigned Program Officers or Grants Management Specialists.

Non-competing continuation applications, such as annual increments, proceed under the original funding terms. Financial allocations, indirect cost rate agreements, and authorized budget categories remain valid without administrative amendment.

Annual Progress Reporting and the RPPR

Investigators must submit annual progress reports using the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) format across NIH, NSF, and DOE systems. When completing the RPPR, investigators should describe accomplishments and technical progress using the vocabulary of their approved project aims.

If an awarded grant specifies "machine learning algorithms for diagnostic imaging," the investigator continues using that phrase in the progress report. Program Officers compare progress reports against the originally funded application; introducing new terminology unprompted risks administrative confusion.

Biographical Sketches and Historical Publications

Federal grant applications require standardized biographical sketches, such as the NIH Biosketch and NSF Biographical Sketch formats. These documents highlight personal statements, academic positions, honors, and contributions to science.

Investigators should cite historical publication titles, prior grant awards and public datasets exactly as published; the order does not ask anyone to rename them. Modifying the title of a peer-reviewed paper in a biosketch to replace "artificial intelligence" with "Super Intelligence" creates immediate record discrepancies. A citation whose title does not match the published record is harder for reviewers to find and check.

Subawards and Collaborative Consortium Agreements

Major federal grants frequently include subawards to collaborating universities, medical centers, or private research institutes. Prime recipient institutions do not need to issue amendments to existing subaward agreements, letters of intent, or subrecipient monitoring plans. The order does not address agreements between institutions, and nothing in it calls for amending them.

Regulatory Continuity in the Uniform Guidance (2 CFR Part 200)

Federal grant administration is codified within Title 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations (2 CFR Part 200), commonly known as the Uniform Guidance. Executive Order 14434 directs executive agency communications but does not modify statutory grant regulations or federal cost principles. Administrative requirements regarding allowable costs, equipment capitalization, participant support, and audit standards remain completely stable under codified administrative rules.

Preparing competitive federal grant applications requires intensive collaboration across research investigators, biostatisticians, postdoctoral scholars, and university sponsored research administrators. A single NIH R01 or NSF center proposal incorporates dozens of modular files: Specific Aims, Research Strategy, Biosketches, Facilities and Administrative Resources statements, Budget Justifications, Data Management and Sharing Plans, and institutional letters of support.

When research teams coordinate multi-investigator proposals across personal cloud folders or email attachments, version control failures frequently occur. An investigator may finalize Specific Aims based on an outdated draft, or a departmental administrator might upload an unapproved budget justification to Grants.gov, causing submission delays or compliance rejections.

Academic laboratories and sponsored project teams maintain organized pre-award and post-award records using dedicated workspaces. Fast.io workspaces provide centralized cloud environments where distributed research teams store, organize, and search grant documentation. Research organizations establish dedicated, org-owned workspaces for individual grant proposals, lab groups, or multi-university consortia.

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• Granular access controls: Permissions are set per organization, workspace and share; a share gives an outside party access to only the files or folder placed in it. Principal investigators can grant co-investigators and external subawardees edit access to research strategy drafts while restricting confidential salary data and institutional indirect rate agreements to authorized sponsored programs staff.

• Per-file version history: Every document uploaded to a workspace maintains a complete, auditable revision history. Proposal managers can track iterative revisions of Specific Aims and Project Narratives across internal mock reviews, compare changes, and restore prior drafts if an edit introduces errors.

• Detailed activity log: Fastio keeps a detailed activity log of file uploads, changes, and permission and membership changes, so research compliance officers can see who changed which file and when.

• Metadata Views: Federal funding notices often exceed fifty pages of dense instructions, formatting rules, and submission requirements. Metadata Views convert unstructured solicitation documents and compliance files into structured, queryable data. Teams define extraction fields in plain language, and the system extracts application deadlines, page constraints, font restrictions, required subaward documentation, and budget limits into a filterable spreadsheet view.

• Workspace e-signature: Institutional commitment letters, subaward consortium agreements, and financial conflict of interest forms can be routed and signed directly within the workspace through e-signature. The platform supports sequential or parallel signer routing, optional one-time passcodes per signer, and files executed documents with tamper-evident audit certificates back into the project folder.

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Organize multi-investigator grant narratives, track solicitation revisions, and maintain auditable document histories across dedicated workspaces. Monthly plans include a 14-day trial; a card is required.

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University research offices and principal investigators preparing proposals for upcoming funding cycles should establish a structured protocol to manage terminology while maintaining scientific rigor. Following a five-step operational procedure maintains alignment with agency expectations while protecting proposal evaluations during peer review.

1. Audit the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)

Review the full text of the funding opportunity announcement on Grants.gov, the NIH Guide, or Research.gov. Read the program description to see whether the notice uses Super Intelligence or SI, and read the application instructions and review criteria to see whether either sets a terminology requirement.

2. Align Project Summaries and Specific Aims

If the solicitation adopts Super Intelligence terminology in its program objectives, mirror that vocabulary in the Project Summary/Abstract and Specific Aims. Using the agency's primary terms confirms responsiveness during initial administrative checks and portfolio triage by Program Officers. Spell out "Super Intelligence (SI)" on first appearance.

3. Anchor the Research Strategy to 15 U.S.C. 9401(3)

In the Research Strategy, Project Description, and Approach sections, provide exhaustive technical and algorithmic specificity. Detail model architectures, loss functions, optimization algorithms, training datasets, compute allocations, and cross-validation schemes.

If the notice uses SI, one sentence noting that the methods fall within the definition of artificial intelligence in 15 U.S.C. 9401(3), which the order uses for SI, is enough; reviewers score the methods themselves.

4. Protect Historical Records and Biosketches

Under Section 2(b), maintain original, verbatim titles for all previously published papers, prior federal grant awards, and preliminary data citations across Biographical Sketches and Current and Pending Support disclosures. Never retroactively rename historical publications or past research projects.

5. Consult Program Officials on Solicitations

If a funding announcement's instructions are unclear, contact the scientific or program contact listed in the announcement before submitting. Avoid making unilateral assumptions regarding compliance obligations.

The following checklist assists proposal coordinators and investigators during final submission review: