Duquesne University Of The Holy Spirit

Duquesne University Of The Holy Spirit, a private Catholic non-profit university headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a federal grant recipient and prime contractor operating across 81 distinct federal agencies, with 90% of its federal awards held as prime (296 awards) and 10% as sub-recipient or subcontractor (34 awards). The university does not compete under set-aside designations; all work is full-and-open, reflecting its tax-exempt educational institution status.

Duquesne's federal footprint splits sharply between two distinct revenue streams. The primary contract revenue derives from tuition and fee delivery orders under Basic Ordering Agreements with the Department of the Navy's Naval Education and Training Command and Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, supporting military personnel pursuing post-secondary degrees. Recent delivery orders include $163,695 on March 3, 2026, $172,218 on July 1, 2025, $94,305 on October 21, 2024, and $65,472 on September 30, 2024, all for tuition and fees in Pittsburgh. These orders draw against a single-award BOA with a $1 million ceiling running through August 2031. The university's primary contract vehicles are the Naval Education and Training Command BOA (6 task orders, $160 thousand combined potential value), the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery BOA (4 task orders, $496 thousand), and an Air Force Indefinite Delivery Contract (11 task orders, $74 thousand). Contract work is concentrated but modest in dollar volume.

The university's dominant federal footprint, by both award count and obligated dollars, is federally-funded research and development administered through grants from the National Science Foundation (42 awards), the National Institutes of Health (29 awards), the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (13 awards), the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (15 awards), and the Department of the Army (15 awards). These represent 35% of the university's 330 total federal awards. Recent and representative grant work includes a $962,994 Defense Health Agency project grant (September 15, 2026, through September 14, 2028) for development of long-acting, single-dose nanomedicine for battlefield analgesia and neuromuscular recovery; a $517,494 National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke grant (July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2028) examining differentially expressed RNA splice isoforms of transcription factor ATF3 in pain responses; a $512,397 National Institute of General Medical Sciences grant (September 11, 2025, through August 31, 2028) for crosslinking-mass spectrometry studies of glycine receptor intracellular domain structure; and a $507,121 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant (August 21, 2025, through July 31, 2028) investigating RNA homodimerization strand displacement pathways as antiviral drug targets for HIV-1, SARS-CoV-2, HCV, and emerging pathogens. The university also holds an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program award (September 1, 2025, through August 31, 2030) supporting graduate fellows across the institution, and a $619,660 Appalachian Regional Commission grant (July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2027) for career and technical education services to the Appalachian region. Research capabilities span neuroscience, virology, pharmaceutical development, chemistry, computational biology, physics, materials science, and biomedical engineering, with particular depth in brain injury recovery, neurological disease mechanisms, infectious disease therapy, and vocal biomechanics.

Customer concentration by award count centers on NSF (42 awards) and NIH entities, accounting for 35% of awards. By potential value, the Navy dominates at $1.2 million combined across 7 awards, followed by the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery at $241 thousand across 10 awards. This divergence reflects the contract business (many small tuition delivery orders to Navy) versus the research grant business (fewer but substantially larger NIH and NSF awards). Across the 330 awards tracked, combined obligated dollars ($154.8 million) vastly exceed combined potential value ($2.8 million), reflecting mature, invoiced grant work.

Duquesne subcontracts to industry partners on federally-funded research projects. Recent sub-awards include work under Leidos, Inc. (May 20, 2025, research support services), Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute FFRDC (October 11, 2024, R&D support for defense systems engineering), and TDA Research, Inc. (October 23, 2024, SBIR Phase II work in genitourinary tissue repair). The university also serves as prime grantee with numerous sub-recipients, including the University of Pittsburgh, University of Washington, Michigan State University, and others, typically for specialized technical and analytical support or complementary research capabilities in mathematics education, vaccine optimization, and traumatic brain injury recovery.

Activity has grown unevenly—10 awards in 2022, 15 in 2023, 22 in 2024, declining to 16 in 2025 and 9 through October 2026. Seventeen awards face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, representing recompete and renewal opportunity. The university's category concentration reflects its academic mission: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools NAICS dominates with 42 awards, and the top PSC code is Education/Training—Tuition/Registration/Membership Fees at 73 awards, underscoring the Navy tuition business. Research work clusters under R&D—Space: Science/Applications (Basic Research) and R&D—Defense Other classifications.