Horizon Research Inc.

Horizon Research Inc., a for-profit Subchapter S corporation based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, conducts STEM education research and evaluation as a prime federal grant recipient (80% of recent awards) and as a subrecipient on NSF and NASA-funded education research projects. The vendor operates exclusively in the federal grant space rather than federal contracting; it holds no federal contract vehicles and has delivered minimal contract work (a single $25 thousand purchase order in 2022).

Horizon Research's federal footprint is heavily concentrated in the National Science Foundation's Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings, which accounts for 14 of 15 NSF awards in the source data. The vendor acts as a prime recipient on six NSF grants spanning K-12 STEM teacher education, curriculum research, and national surveys. Representative prime grant work includes a $362,513 award (CFDA 47.076, STEM Education program) to study how K-12 science teachers use artificial intelligence to modify high-quality open educational resources, with a two-year performance window through August 2028; a $547,647 award to develop and evaluate teaching simulation tools for pre-service elementary mathematics education, running through July 2029; and a $185,731 Rapid Research award documenting science teachers' roles as public health educators during the COVID-19 pandemic. Horizon Research also serves as prime recipient on the 2027 National Survey of Science, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering Education (NSSME+), a longitudinal tracking study examining STEM instruction trends and teacher practices across stratified samples of public and private schools, with performance running through August 2029 and subcontract support from Westat.

As a subrecipient, Horizon Research participates in education research collaboratives led by New York University, Boston University, and Central Washington University, contributing to formative assessment instrument validation, teacher practice codification, and STEM pathway program evaluation. The vendor subcontracts to Central Washington University on multiple iterations of the Northwest Earth and Space Science Pathways (NESSP) grant, a NASA-focused outreach and professional development program serving underserved and underrepresented communities across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

Award activity has remained modest and uneven across the past five years (four awards in 2022, two in 2023, four in 2024, one in 2025, four in 2026), with combined potential value of $6.4 million offset by $35.5 million in obligated dollars across all awards—a signature pattern of multi-year research grant performance in which total outlays substantially exceed initial ceilings. Three awards carry ultimate completion dates within the next twenty-four months, creating recompete opportunity. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Shared Services Center represents a secondary customer with nine awards and $83 thousand in combined potential value. Horizon Research does not compete under SBA set-aside categories.