Lehigh University

Lehigh University's Office of Research, operating as a prime recipient for federal grants and a prime contractor for federal research awards, conducts basic and applied research across materials science, quantum computing, biomedical engineering, artificial intelligence, environmental science, and physics—with the bulk of its federal portfolio in university-based R&D executed at its Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania facility and funded through no-set-aside competitive solicitation.

Lehigh is a private research university headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Office of Research serves as the administrative conduit for federal funding directed to the institution's faculty-led research teams. The university competes full-and-open across all major federal research funders and does not participate in set-aside programs; its awards reflect institutional research capacity and investigator expertise rather than procurement designation.

Federal grant work dominates Lehigh's recent portfolio. The National Science Foundation accounts for roughly 34% of awards by count (400 awards) from the top five customer agencies but carries minimal stated potential value in the summary—a characteristic pattern of NSF's project grant structure, where many awards carry modest individual ceilings. Representative NSF-funded work includes a $1.763 million DMREF award to design high-performance copper alloys for rotating detonation engines (Lehigh as prime with Carnegie Mellon and UC Irvine as sub-recipients); a $1.082 million Integrative Activities award establishing the "Pathways for Graduate Students into the Research Enterprise" workforce development program; and $533 thousand in CAREER award funding for geometry-based control of distributed energy resources in smart grids. Lehigh has also secured research funding from the Department of Energy's Office of Science ($760 thousand for nanoceramics research), the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering ($616 thousand for protease-responsive hydrogels), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Office of Naval Research (multiple awards in optimization and control research), and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Lehigh operates as the recipient on federal grants across 134 customer agencies; NSF, DoE, NIH, DoD (ONR), and the Department of Veterans Affairs anchor the active set by count. The university's research footprint spans fundamental science—theoretical physics, string theory, quantum gravity, and materials science—and applied domains including autonomous systems, disaster response technologies, renewable energy, biomedical diagnostics, and smart grid control. Work is performed at the university's research facility in Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania, with some collaborative fieldwork (e.g., volcanology research in Chile, oceanographic research at hydrothermal vents).

Contract work is minimal relative to grant activity. Recent prime contract awards include a $2.97 million definitive contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for research on snow mass estimation using multi-sensor microwave methods (BAA 24-0005, completion September 2029); a $110 thousand Naval Facilities Engineering Command contract for resilience design; and smaller purchases from the Department of Veterans Affairs ($30 thousand for electrophysiological validation support) and the Federal Highway Administration ($252 thousand for multi-hazard fragility modeling of bridges). None of these carry set-aside designations.

Lehigh subcontracts as a research contributor to larger consortia and cooperative agreements. Recent sub-recipient roles include work under Duke University's prime on fungal antifungal mechanisms (NIBIB), the University of Pennsylvania's prime on high-dimensional machine learning for drug repurposing in Alzheimer's research, the University of Kansas Center for Research's prime on refrigerant reclamation (with Lehigh co-investigators Vicic, Young, Fredin, and Marsh leading thrust work), and the University of Washington's STC on optoelectronic materials (IMOD). Lehigh also serves as a collaborating institution on research teams where investigators hold sub-grants but work is coordinated through primary awardee universities (e.g., Temple University's gun violence media research, Pennsylvania State's mushroom farming research).

The university's research activity has moderated in recent years—101 awards in 2024, down to 50 in 2025 and 32 in 2026 (the latter partially explained by incomplete year data). Seventy-six awards reach ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, carrying $1.3 million in combined potential value, representing recompete opportunity. The source data's "combined dollars obligated" figure ($617.2 million) substantially exceeds stated combined potential value ($19 million), indicating historical drawdown of multi-year research commitments.

Lehigh operates one named subsidiary, the Manufacturers Resource Center, though the source does not detail its federal role. The university's Office of Research handles federal contracting and grant administration centrally; investigators submit proposals through institutional systems aligned with NSF and NIH guidelines.