The National Science Foundation is awarding $47 million for a four-year pilot model that will place more Ph.D. students inside private-company research environments, funded jointly by universities, NSF, and industry partners. Under the NSF pilot, universities will cover the first year of students’ support while NSF funds the remainder; companies will also match funding for at least one year of dissertation research at their sites. The initiative is intended to address recommendations from a recent White House report on overhauling the nation’s research portfolio. The program will support more than 250 doctoral students over five years and is meant to respond to a trend in which more STEM Ph.D. recipients enter private industry rather than academic careers. Students will be mentored by both academic and company researchers, including partners such as Carnegie Mellon University, Dartmouth College, the University of Michigan, and the University of Delaware; industry partners cited include Bayer, DuPont, and MassMutual. For graduate education leaders, the pilot signals increased federal willingness to restructure dissertation training around industry co-mentorship while funding students through a hybrid employment-and-education model.