Mississippi State University

Mississippi State University, a public 1862 land-grant research institution headquartered in Starkville, Mississippi, functions as a prime recipient on federal contracts and grants across 245 distinct agencies, delivering research, education, technical assistance, and specialized laboratory services spanning agriculture, engineering, environmental science, cybersecurity, and public health. The university operates as a full-and-open competitor without SBA set-aside designations, positioning itself as a peer research institution across civilian, defense, and science agencies rather than as a small business.

The university's concrete capability portfolio spans agricultural research and extension programming in forestry, aquaculture, crop production, and animal health; high-performance computing and data management services; environmental restoration and coastal resilience research; materials science and advanced manufacturing; cybersecurity and AI/ML applications; veterinary diagnostics including avian influenza and antimicrobial resistance testing; and workforce development through graduate training, K-12 STEM education, and professional certification programs. Recent representative work includes a $14.6 million NOAA delivery order for high-performance computing as a managed service (awarded September 2026, extending through September 2030); a $10 million Department of Homeland Security task order for unmanned systems testing and evaluation through September 2028; a $3.8 million Department of Energy Other Transaction Agreement for simulation and evaluation equipment; a $1.2 million Army Engineer Research and Development Center contract for cured-in-place pipe materials research; and NASA Stenlis Space Center work on aerospike nozzle design optimization. Federal grant work spans the National Science Foundation across engineering, biological sciences, chemistry, and computer science; the National Institutes of Health and NIH institutes; USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture competitive programs including Agriculture and Food Research Initiative; Department of Defense research through DARPA and service laboratory networks; and EPA, NOAA, and Department of Interior coastal and environmental restoration initiatives.

The university's top customer agencies by award count are USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (375 awards), USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (285 awards), and the National Science Foundation (253 awards)—reflecting the institution's land-grant mission in agricultural science, food security, and STEM education. By potential value, the Army Engineer Research and Development Center ($113.2 million across 46 awards), NOAA ($74.8 million across 86 awards), and NASA ($5.1 million across 58 awards) anchor the portfolio, though concentration remains diffuse across a broad federal customer base. The university holds single-award indefinite-delivery contracts with NOAA for high-performance computing research and collaboration (ceiling $45 million, awarded September 2025) and Other Transaction IDVs with DARPA (ALBATROSS program, $7.4 million ceiling, April 2025) and the Army Engineer Research and Development Center for prototype digital twin development ($1.4 million ceiling, August 2024). Task order activity under these vehicles demonstrates sustained federal demand; recent NOAA modifications and Army delivery orders indicate active utilization.

Activity has remained steady, with 196 awards in 2023, 221 in 2024, and 180 in 2025, trending downward in 2026 (106 awards) as the source data reaches the present date. The recompete cliff presents $37.5 million in combined potential value across 181 awards reaching ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, representing substantive recompete exposure across agricultural research, environmental programs, and extension services. Obligated dollars ($2.92 billion) exceed combined potential value (299% ratio), indicating multi-year funding cycles and cumulative historical obligations spanning decades of federal partnership since the university's first recorded award in 1981.

The Service Contract Inventory data reflects limited reporting threshold capture: across FY2023–FY2025, SCI shows $8.4 million in invoiced revenue on prime federal service contracts with median government-paid rates around $124/hr and peak rates through $158.85/hr, spanning roughly 9–12 FTEs per fiscal year. These figures represent only service contracts above the $150,000 SCI threshold and exclude goods, grants, micro-purchases, and the university's dominant research and education funding streams; they do not reflect total enterprise revenue or the full scope of federal work. The university builds predominantly in-house delivery teams; across SCI-reportable prime contracts, subcontractors account for 3% of average contractor hours, with only three named subcontractors identified, signaling that MSU executes most work through its own faculty, staff, and graduate student workforce rather than through teaming arrangements.

On the sub-award side, Mississippi State University subcontracts to prime recipients including the University of California at Santa Barbara (environmental remote sensing research using drones in Guatemala), North Carolina State University (invasive species and pecan IPM research), the University of South Alabama (coastal ecosystem and environmental valuation research), Michigan State University (nuclear physics and isotope research), and dozens of other academic and nonprofit prime recipients, delivering specialized technical expertise, fieldwork, data analysis, and graduate student training in applied research contexts. The university also receives federal pass-through sub-awards for construction, transportation, and community development projects managed through state and local sponsors.

The university's federal footprint reflects its identity as a comprehensive land-grant research enterprise: broad-based grant funding from NSF, USDA, NIH, and EPA for fundamental and applied research; competitive contracts for specialized services in agricultural diagnostics, environmental restoration, and cybersecurity; extension and outreach funding across all 82 Mississippi counties; and formalized research partnerships with federal laboratories and field stations. Recompete activity and the steady flow of new task orders across its parent vehicles signal sustained agency confidence and recurring federal demand for the university's technical depth, research infrastructure, and state-level programmatic reach.