National Cold Fusion Institute

The National Cold Fusion Institute (NCFI) was a nonprofit research institute affiliated with the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1989 to research cold fusion, a phenomenon that chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons claimed to have achieved earlier in the year. It closed in 1991.

In March 1989, Fleischmann and Pons announced that they had achieved nuclear fusion during an experiment using two electrodes made of palladium submerged in heavy water. While other researchers initially reported that similar experiments had resulted in some evidence of nuclear fusion, these results were subsequently withdrawn due to various errors, and in subsequent studies, researchers were largely critical of Fleischmann's and Pons's findings. However, in April 1989, the government of Utah voted to allocate $4.5 million (equivalent to $11.7 million in 2025) to establish and operate a research institute to investigate the proposed phenomenon.

The institute was officially established on August 7 at a facility in the University of Utah Research Park, with Hugo Rossi serving as its first director. Rossi resigned in November 1989, later stating that his resignation was due in part to difficulties in garnering collaboration between the researchers, with particular criticism towards Pons. In 1990, the institute was the subject of controversy when an anonymous financial donation to the institute was revealed by university president Chase N. Peterson to have been from the university itself. In the later half of that year, the institute was subject to a financial audit by the Utah State Auditor's office and a scientific review by an independent panel of researchers, with the latter reporting that there was no evidence that nuclear fusion had occurred as part of the institute's experiments. In June 1991, the institute closed, having exhausted its initial funding and having failed to garner significant private funding.

In 2022, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the institute had failed to verify Fleischmann's and Pons's findings during its existence. While the university continued to pay attorneys to pursue several patent applications regarding cold fusion, no patent applications were ever granted. Fleischmann and Pons continued research into cold fusion in France, though without success.