Keck Graduate Institute Of Applied Life Sciences

Keck Graduate Institute Of Applied Life Sciences, doing business as Keck Graduate Institute Of Applied Life, is a tax-exempt private educational institution in Claremont, California that serves as a federal grant recipient and contract prime in applied life sciences research and education, with no subcontract activity in the federal footprint. The institute operates across research, bioprocessing education, and workforce development without SBA set-asides, competing in full-and-open federal grant and research contract vehicles.

The institute's federal portfolio spans 46 awards across prime contracts and grants (43 awards, 93% of total) and grant sub-awards (3 awards, 7%), with combined potential value of $147.5 million and $35.2 million obligated to date. The portfolio is anchored by a single dominant contract vehicle: a $147.1 million indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity arrangement with the Department of the Navy to support United States Naval Community College Partnerships program, which represents 99.7% of the combined potential-value ceiling across all awards. Beyond that Navy partnership, recent work includes a $412,500 firm fixed-price definitive contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded August 2025 to develop execution frameworks for DARPA Biological Technologies programs addressing technical, regulatory, and commercialization challenges simultaneously (completion August 2026), a $543,430 National Science Foundation grant (CFDA 47.083, Integrative Activities program) awarded August 2026 to acquire fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) equipment for biotechnology research and biomanufacturing education, and a $42,713.52 Shared Services Center cooperative agreement awarded February 2023 for development of a microfluidics system to detect circulating microRNA from blood.

Customer concentration by award count spreads across research and education agencies. The National Science Foundation leads with 12 awards, followed by the Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education (5 awards) and multiple National Institutes of Health divisions including the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and National Institute on Aging (3 awards each). These five customer categories account for 57% of recent awards. Dollar concentration is entirely different: the Department of the Navy's single Naval Community College Partnerships vehicle dominates with $147.1 million potential value, while research grants from NSF, NIH, and other civilian agencies carry substantially smaller individual ceilings. Recent grant work includes a National Institute on Aging award (September 2024, completion August 2027) examining obesity-induced hepatic amyloid beta dysregulation in Alzheimer's disease pathology, a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant (January 2022, completion December 2023) for pilot development of low-cost rapid infectious disease diagnostics via alpha particle detection, and a SAMHSA Center for Mental Health Services grant (December 2022, completion September 2026) for mental health first aid training to pharmacists across the greater Los Angeles area. The institute also acts as a sub-recipient under University of Delaware grants, including a NIIMBL Faculty Fellow Sabbatical Program sub-award (February 2026) and a NIIMBL eXperience Educator Program providing biopharmaceutical industry immersion for high school STEM educators. Activity has remained sparse in recent years (one to three awards per year in 2022–2026), with only two awards facing completion inside the next twenty-four months and no identified recompete cliff exposure.