Cornell University

Cornell University's Office of Sponsored Programs, operating as a tax-exempt educational institution and 1862 land-grant university, receives federal funding as both a direct prime grant and contract recipient and as a sub-recipient on collaborative research projects across civilian and defense agencies. The university operates a comprehensive federal research enterprise spanning basic science, applied research, extension programming, and educational initiatives with no set-aside designations—Cornell competes on full-and-open basis across all awards.

Cornell's federal footprint centers on research and educational grants from the National Science Foundation (1,750 awards), the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (690 awards), NASA (425 awards), and the National Institutes of Health (424 awards), with a smaller contract portfolio focused on specialized services including animal health diagnostics, environmental monitoring, dispute resolution, and data subscription services. Recent prime contract awards include a $1.17 million five-year Landsat Science Team engagement with the U.S. Geological Survey; a $885 thousand Alternative Dispute Resolution services contract with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission through 2031; and delivery orders for weather radiosonde data subscriptions, environmental information system support, and highly pathogenic avian influenza diagnostic testing through the National Animal Health Laboratory Network. Cornell also holds a $1.24 million Other Transaction IDV with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (awarded July 2025) for neural operator-based discovery and real-time digital twins in microstructured materials, with task order authority to issue additional work as needed.

The university's research portfolio is concentrated in the top five federal customers, which account for 42% of recent award volume and 46% of combined potential value. NASA's Shared Services Center leads in dollar value ($108.2 million across 425 awards), followed by NOAA ($49.7 million across 125 awards). Top NAICS categories reflect Cornell's identity as a research university: research and development in physical, engineering, and life sciences; veterinary services (reflecting the College of Veterinary Medicine's federal contracts for animal disease diagnostics and surveillance); and professional scientific and technical services. Recent NSF CAREER and MURI awards demonstrate strength in quantum computing, materials science, artificial intelligence, climate science, and biosciences. Cornell also operates major extension and land-grant programs funded through formula grants from USDA NIFA, including Smith-Lever funding ($18.1 million for Cornell Cooperative Extension statewide operations), Hatch Act funding (agricultural experiment stations), and specialized programs like the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program ($3.51 million) and Cooperative Forestry Research ($437 thousand).

Service Contract Inventory data show limited SCI-reportable service contracting activity ($4.4 million invoiced FY2022–FY2024 across prime and sub roles), with median government-paid rates of $104.57/hour and a trajectory declining from 9.9 FTEs in FY2022 to 4.2 FTEs in FY2024. This reflects Cornell's federal funding model: the vast majority of federal dollars flow through grants and research contracts specifying direct costs, salaries, and equipment purchases rather than time-and-materials service contracts. The university operates as a prime on the majority of awards (93%) and serves as a sub-recipient or subcontractor on collaborative research projects with other universities and research institutions—recent sub-awardee relationships include work on gravitational wave physics (with Caltech and University of Mississippi), tree fruit robotics (with FFRobotics), and quantum machine learning (with MIT, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Yale, and University of Chicago).

Recompete exposure in the next twenty-four months totals $38.9 million across 594 awards, driven primarily by formula grants and ongoing prime research contracts nearing the end of their performance periods. The university's federal research presence is distributed across geographic sites including the main Ithaca campus (headquarters, 341 Pine Tree Road, Ithaca, NY 14850), the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva, veterinary diagnostic facilities in Ames, Iowa and Fort Collins, Colorado, and distributed collaborative sites nationwide and internationally. Cornell's Office of Sponsored Programs administers the federal compliance, financial management, and reporting functions across the university's multiple colleges and operational units.