据美国总统科技政策办公室发布的消息，美国拟定以下七个方面为2012年重点科技发展领域：
一、促进经济可持续发展和就业
1.为了加强美国在机器人技术、信息物理系统和柔性制造领域的领先地位，支持先进制造业的研究与开发；2.支持与建立21世纪生物经济基础相关的研究。
二、应对威胁人类健康的重大疾病，提高人类健康水平，降低医疗保健成本
1.优先支持能够快速提高生命科学发现的潜在技术的研究；2.优先支持能够减少新流行病疫苗开发时间的研究。
三、减少能源进口依赖和温室气体排放，开创清洁能源未来
1.重点支持清洁能源技术的研究与开发；2.优先支持先进汽车技术的研究与开发。
四、理解、适应和减缓全球气候变化的影响
1.支持跨部门合作并需长期持续的、有关气候变化相关的科学、影响、薄弱环节、减缓和适应政策等的评估；2.优先支持有关温室气体排放测量、报告和查证的研究。
五、应对涉及食品、光纤和生物燃料的陆地、淡水、海洋、以及基于可持续发展及生物多样性的生态系统服务的竞争性需求
1.优先支持整合生态系统管理的方法，为决策提供支撑；2. 整合海洋观测能力，以支撑生态系统的管理。
六、开发保护军队、人民和国家利益的技术
1.支持网络安全的研究与开发，找出可以设计和开发可靠网络空间的新方法以抵御各类网络攻击； 2.优先支持以“无核世界”为目标的国家综合研究与开发项目。
七、应对新的挑战，加强6大交叉领域
1.科学、技术、工程与数学教育和适应社会不同阶层、不同年龄、不同程度的先进学习技术；2.研究型大学、实验室的研究活力与创造性，以及基础研究的持续支持；3.稳固、完善的信息通讯、交通和能源基础设施；4.加强研究人员、私营机构、大学和其他研究机构之间的合作；5.空间能力，包括探索外太空和地球观测、地理定位、通讯等；6.促进研究、产业和创新的经济与政策环境。
（原题为“美国2012年重点科技领域”。详细中文报道可见：http://www.most.gov.cn/gnwkjdt/201101/t20110110_84127.htm）
Appendix：Challenges and Areas to be Strengthened
In the 2012 Budget, agencies should focus resources on addressing challenges:
Promoting sustainable economic growth and job creation
- Support R&D in advanced manufacturing to strengthen
- Support research to establish the foundations for a 21st century “bio-economy”. Advances in biotechnology and improvements in our ability to design biological systems have the potential to address critical national needs in agriculture, energy, health, and the environment.
- Support two specific areas within existing interagency efforts: the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s signature initiatives and the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) initiative’s focus on research to improve our ability to derive value and scientific inferences from enormous quantities of data.
Defeating the most dangerous diseases and achieving better health outcomes for all while reducing health care costs
- Prioritize research investments in technologies that have the potential to accelerate the pace of discovery in the life sciences, especially imaging, bioinformatics, and high-throughput biology.
- Prioritize investments to reduce the time needed to develop vaccines for future pandemics, consistent with the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s recommendations on Influenza Vaccinology.
Moving toward a clean energy future to reduce dependence on energy imports while curbing greenhouse gas emissions
-Prioritize investments in the research and development of clean energy technologies, especially solar energy, next-generation biofuels, and sustainable green buildings and building retrofit technologies.
- Prioritize R&D on advanced vehicle technologies, particularly modeling and simulation of lightweight materials and their manufacturing processes, batteries, and hybrid power trains; and systems integration and demonstration of advanced vehicle platforms.
Understanding, adapting to, and mitigating the impacts of global climate change
- Support, within coordinated interagency investments in the U.S. Global Change Research Program, an integrated and continuing National Climate Assessment of climate change science, impacts, vulnerabilities, and response strategies, including mitigation and adaptation.
- Prioritize research for measuring, reporting and verifying greenhouse gas emissions.
Managing the competing demands on land, fresh water, and the oceans for the production of food, fiber, biofuels, and ecosystem services based on sustainability and biodiversity
- Support research on integrated ecosystem management approaches that bring together biological, physical, chemical, and human uses data into forecast models, assessments and decision support tools.
- Develop and deploy integrated ocean observing capabilities to support ecosystems-based management, including under conditions of changing climate and multiple stressors (e.g., oil spills).
Developing the technologies to protect our troops, citizens, and national interests
- Support cybersecurity R&D to investigate novel means for designing and developing trustworthy cyberspace – a system of defensible subsystems that operate safely in an environment that is presumed to be compromised. Agencies should respond to the call in the President’s Cyberspace Policy Review for R&D in game-changing technologies, including moving target defense strategies, tailored trustworthy spaces, and cyber incentives.
- Prioritize investments in a comprehensive national R&D program to support continued progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons, including expanded work on verification technologies and the development of transparency measures, as outlined in the Nuclear Posture Review.
- Support investments in chemical and biological agent defenses with an interagency effort to improve the Nation’s ability to defend against the use of high-threat agents as weapons.
Addressing these challenges will require strengthening our efforts in six cross-cutting areas:
- Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and advanced learning technologies at every level, from early childhood to lifelong learning, and for all segments of society;
- The vitality and productivity of our research universities and national and private laboratories, and sustained support for fundamental research;
- The capacity and robustness of infrastructures for information and communication, transportation, and energy;
- High-impact collaborations with researchers, the private sector, universities and other institutions of higher learning, civil society, and international partners to achieve U.S. foreign policy, global health, energy, climate change, and global development objectives;
- Capabilities in space, which are germane not only to looking and exploring outward but also to Earth observation, geopositioning, communication, and more; and
- An economic and policy environment that promotes and rewards research, entrepreneurship, and innovation.