New Jersey Institute Of Technology

New Jersey Institute of Technology (doing business as NJIT), a publicly controlled New Jersey state research university and Hispanic-serving institution headquartered in Newark, acts as a prime recipient on federal research grants and as a prime contractor on smaller federal purchase orders and task orders—not as a for-profit vendor, but as a public educational research entity competing in the open federal marketplace on a non-set-aside basis.

NJIT's federal footprint is overwhelmingly skewed toward research grants rather than contracts. Across 1,402 total awards (91% prime, 9% sub), combined potential value reaches $220.2 million with $795.7 million in obligations spread over more than four decades; however, the recent award trajectory shows volatility—activity peaked at 131 awards in 2024 before dropping to 29 in 2026 year-to-date. The top five customer agencies by award count—National Science Foundation (342 awards), NASA Shared Services Center (145 awards, $39.7 million potential value), NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (37), Army Materiel Command Contracting Command Picatinny Arsenal (37 awards, $19.3 million), and NSF's Division of Mathematical Sciences (36)—account for 43% of awards. By dollar magnitude, however, a different ranking emerges: Army Research, Development and Engineering Command leads with 16 awards worth $67 million in potential value, followed by NASA SSC ($39.7 million), Picatinny ($19.3 million), Army ($2.2 million), and DOT Federal Highway Administration ($840 thousand). This split signals that NSF funds volume while Army and NASA anchor the largest individual awards.

NJIT's research portfolio spans solar physics, space weather, artificial intelligence, materials science, environmental engineering, biomedical technology, and mathematics—reflecting a broad research university mission rather than focused vendor specialization. Representative prime grant work includes a $4.99 million cooperative agreement (awarded October 2024, completing September 2029) to establish an AI-Powered Solar Eruption Center of Excellence in Research and Education; a $752.5 million NIH NIGMS project grant for novel AI and machine learning algorithms for analyzing single-cell omics data (FY2025–FY2030); a $718.678 million NHLBI award for cardiac energy harvesting technology for leadless pacemakers (June 2026–February 2031); and a $2.0 million NSF Convergence Accelerator grant to develop a bio-inspired self-assembling robotic tile swarm system for flood response (January 2024–December 2024). On the contract side, NJIT holds a single-award Indefinite Delivery Contract (W911QX24D0021) with the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (ceiling $250 thousand, through September 2029) for AI-driven multi-fidelity modeling supporting DARPA reliability assessments, under which one task order worth $99.849 thousand was placed in September 2024. NJIT also received smaller purchase orders from CDC Pittsburgh ($30 thousand for advanced biomechanical analysis, awarded July 2026) and Naval Information Warfare Systems Command ($224.065 thousand for services and fringe benefits, awarded December 2025). The contrast is stark: NJIT's grant portfolio, which comprises the vast majority of its federal work by count and many high-dollar awards, is research-driven and grounded in academic capacity; its contract footprint is thin and transactional.

Service Contract Inventory data—covering only federal service contracts above the $150 thousand reporting threshold—shows NJIT reported 8 SCI-reportable prime contracts across FY2022–FY2024 with combined invoiced revenue of $1.5 million ($291 thousand in FY2022, $420 thousand in FY2023, $739 thousand in FY2024). Workforce scale ranged from 1.7 FTEs in FY2022 to 3.8 in FY2023 to 0.7 in FY2024, indicating highly variable and small service-contract delivery. Government-paid hourly rates on these contracts ranged from a 10th percentile of $46.44/hr to a median of $128.20/hr to a 90th percentile of $640.42/hr, reflecting mixed labor categories—likely including graduate student researchers and faculty alongside technicians. Across SCI-reportable prime contracts, NJIT used zero subcontractor hours, indicating captive delivery. SCI data is a strict subset of NJIT's total federal revenue and does not capture grant revenue (which dominates NJIT's federal portfolio), goods, micro-purchases, or non-federal work.

NJIT competes entirely in full-and-open federal markets with no set-aside designation; as a public institution, it is ineligible for 8(a), HUBZone, SDVOSB, or WOSB set-asides. Its designation as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and as New Jersey's public polytechnic research university shape its federal identity but do not gate its bidding.

The subsidiary New Jersey Innovation Institute Inc. (a non-profit organization) is named in the corporate structure block but carries no detail on its federal activities or role within NJIT's contracting operations. In subcontractor roles, NJIT appears as a named sub on awards from Triad National Security LLC (Los Alamos National Laboratory management competition) and various academic prime recipients (Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers, Louisiana State University, and others) on research grants spanning materials science, geophysics, neuroscience, bioengineering, and climate modeling. These sub-awards typically involve NJIT faculty or researchers contributing specialized expertise or data analysis rather than full project execution.

Recompete exposure in the next 24 months totals 108 awards with combined potential value of $16.3 million—primarily renewal-eligible research grants rather than contract vehicles at risk. The small contract footprint (purchase orders and task orders under $1 million each) poses no material recompete cliff. NJIT's federal visibility is built on sustained grant research funding, not on large-dollar service or development contracts.