The National Science Foundation (NSF), which believes in multidisciplinary and collaborative research to address national needs and to drive the national research system to produce well defined outputs that will benefit the intended end users, initiated the National Thematic Research Programme (NTRP) where the themes are decided as per the national priorities. In this Programme the NSF adopts a new approach, where the NSF itself identifies the research problems and invite research groups who have demonstrated their capability in conducting research successfully over the years to carry out research on these identified research problems.

The NSF has identified Food Security, Climate Change & Natural Disasters and Water Security as the priority areas to start with under the NTRP. The Research Programme will address problems under each theme using a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to carryout research on identified problems.

Under the NTRP it is expected to promote research which commence from national needs and terminate in producing end-products that can be harnessed for national development. Further it is expected that the research promoted under the proposed programme will achieve self-sustainability.