President And Fellows Of Harvard College

President and Fellows of Harvard College, operating through Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is a tax-exempt educational institution functioning as a prime recipient on federal research grants and a smaller-volume prime contractor on research services agreements across health and environmental sciences. The School operates as a division of Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, competing exclusively in full-and-open procurements with no set-asides; it does not hold acquisition contract vehicles and does not function as a government contractor in the traditional sense.

The School's federal footprint is dominated by research grants rather than service contracts or procurement awards. Recent activity spans 1,585 total awards (1,150 prime, 435 sub-recipient), split heavily toward federal grant funding through the National Institutes of Health and other civilian research agencies. Grant work centers on epidemiological research, biostatistics, data science, and environmental health sciences—domains aligned with the institution's core academic mission. Representative prime grant work includes a $24.97 million five-year cooperative agreement from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS) RISE program investigating immune aging and reproductive health in people with HIV; a $3.28 million National Institute on Aging grant on herpesvirus infection and tau-pathology in Alzheimer's disease using the Nurses' Health Study cohort; a $1.766 million National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke award combining Medicare claims analysis with mechanistic studies on environmental factors in Lewy body dementia; and a $1.691 million National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant (TSEPAMO Next Generation) on HIV treatment and prevention in pregnant women in Botswana. Service contract work is far smaller: a $6.1 million VA indefinite-delivery contract (through September 2027) furnishes biostatistician, data scientist, database analyst, and data analyst expertise to the VA Boston Healthcare System for epidemiology bioinformatics support and the Medical Electronic Research Center (MAVERIC) program, with multiple firm fixed-price delivery orders issued through FY2026 totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars per task order.

Customer concentration is extreme. The top five funding agencies account for roughly 49% of recent award count: the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases leads with 142 awards and $62.4 million combined potential value; the Veterans Affairs' Veterans Integrated Service Network 1 has 37 awards and $29.4 million; the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development carries 57 awards and $27.5 million; the National Cancer Institute holds 132 awards and $568 thousand; and the National Institute on Aging holds 100 awards. By potential value, NIAID dominates at $62.4 million, followed by VISN 1 at $29.4 million and NICHD at $27.5 million—the latter two funded through a single VA contract IDV and multiple NIH research grants respectively. The concentration reflects the School's niche in NIH-funded population and environmental epidemiology, with secondary engagement in VA health services research and training programs. Recent recompete exposure is material: 97 awards (combined potential value $64 million) reach ultimate completion within the next 24 months, representing approximately 45% of the combined potential value in the recent award population.

The School operates overwhelmingly as a prime recipient on grants (73% of awards) rather than as a subcontractor to other institutions (27%). Across SCI-reportable federal service contracts, the School reports consistent performance with median government-paid rates around $91.63 per hour, ranging from $66.85 per hour (10th percentile) to $172.42 per hour (90th percentile)—a span reflecting diversity in labor categories (entry-level analysts through senior faculty). SCI-reported invoicing ran $45.9 million across FY2022–FY2025 (roughly $11–13.5 million per fiscal year) across 48–56 full-time equivalents annually. These SCI figures represent a narrow slice of the School's total federal footprint and do not capture the vast majority of grant funding flowing through the institution. When operating as a prime on service contracts, the School subcontracts to other institutions at an 11% sub-hours share on average, with 54 named subcontractors identified across prime contracts. Subcontract relationships are research-specific: the School subs to Seattle Children's Hospital on tuberculosis vaccine research (IMPAC-TB), to Research Triangle Institute on cost-effectiveness analysis services for TB research, and to partner institutions including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and numerous academic medical centers for co-investigator support, biospecimen analysis, statistical methods development, and epidemiological sub-studies embedded in larger cohort research.

The School's grant recipients include numerous NIH institutes—National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and National Human Genome Research Institute—as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (supporting regional public health preparedness and cancer prevention networks), the Defense Health Agency (military medical research), and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The award portfolio reflects the School's position as a research institution: work is performed at the School's Cambridge, Massachusetts location and at field sites globally (Boston Healthcare System, VA facilities, Botswana, Madagascar, South Africa, Ukraine, Puerto Rico, and domestic prospective cohorts). The School does not compete for acquisition contracts on a sustained basis and holds no standing IDIQs or government-wide vehicles; the VA contract and GSA purchase orders noted in recent awards are one-off or short-duration transactional awards. The institutional structure places the School as a division of Harvard College (tax-exempt parent), which also operates as a prime grant recipient across multiple NIH institutes and non-NIH federal research agencies.