Field Museum Of Natural History

Field Museum Of Natural History, doing business as Research Center, is a Chicago-based tax-exempt nonprofit that serves as a prime recipient of federal research grants across 28 agencies, with nearly all recent awards (99%) structured as grants rather than contracts. The museum operates as a research institution delivering paleontological research, collections digitization, biodiversity studies, conservation science, and cultural repatriation services funded primarily through the National Science Foundation and related federal science agencies.

The museum's customer concentration is heavily skewed toward the National Science Foundation, which accounts for 87 of the museum's 180 total awards in the source period (covering 64% by count but not the leading share by potential dollar value). The top-five funding entities by award count include NSF divisions (Environmental Biology, Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences), the Department of the Interior National Park Service, the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, and NASA's Shared Services Center. The top-customer ranking by potential value diverges sharply from count: NASA Shared Services Center leads with six awards carrying $1.2 million in combined potential value, followed by the CDC and the Smithsonian, while NSF's 87 awards reflect the museum's core mission alignment with basic biological and earth-science research rather than high-dollar contract work.

Recent capability work spans paleontology, evolutionary biology, and museum operations. A $811,851 NSF Environmental Biology grant awarded September 2026 (three months old) funds research on the evolution of the aerodynamic feathered wing, combining fossil evidence from feathered dinosaurs with living-bird data to examine forelimb feather evolution over 165 million years, with findings developed into interactive exhibits and disseminated through the museum's Teen Volunteer Program. A $396,676 NSF Geosciences grant from February 2025 investigates the early history of tropical forests and flowering plants in the Early Cretaceous using well-preserved fossils from Colombia and Ecuador, producing bilingual educational materials and building paleontological collections. A $600,000 NSF Earth Sciences collaborative research award from January 2024 examines ecosystem recovery from the Permo-Triassic mass extinction in South Africa's Karoo Basin, including public outreach in local South African languages and museum exhibit upgrades. A $200,256 NSF Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences grant from September 2024 supports the Elemental Analysis Facility at the museum, providing non-destructive compositional analysis of archaeological ceramics, glass, metals, and pigments for researchers studying trade and technology in ancient societies. The museum also acts as prime recipient on an EPA Environmental Education grant (CFDA 66.951) providing $133,333 to design environmental education practices and expand the Mighty Acorns partnership in the Calumet region, with five sub-awards to eligible partner organizations.

Activity has remained relatively flat over the past five years (ranging from one to five awards annually in 2022–2026), with minimal recompete exposure—only two awards reach ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months. The museum's obligated dollars ($46.5 million) significantly exceed its combined potential value ($3.6 million), indicating that many awards in the source data are legacy or multi-year projects with invoiced work substantially beyond their initial potential-value estimates. The museum operates predominantly as a prime grant recipient in basic research, collections management, and public education, with only one federal grant sub-award recorded in the source (a post-doctoral researcher position funded through the University of Wisconsin System for PFAS exposure studies in Bald Eagles). Work is performed at the Field Museum's Chicago headquarters and at field research sites internationally, including South Africa, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Papua New Guinea.