Questek Innovations LLC

Questek Innovations LLC, an Evanston, Illinois-based small business, delivers computational materials engineering and advanced manufacturing research and development services to defense and civilian agencies as a prime contractor on 98% of its recent federal awards. The company competes predominantly under small business set-asides, with more than three-quarters of its contract portfolio designated as Total Small Business across SBIR, STTR, and traditional R&D procurements.

Questek's capability footprint centers on Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) — the computational design and modeling of metal alloys, coatings, additive manufacturing processes, and high-performance materials for military and aerospace applications. Representative recent prime work includes a $1.4 million cost-plus-fixed-fee Naval Air Warfare Center contract awarded December 4, 2025 for advanced materials engineering supporting naval aviation modernization (completion June 20, 2029); a $3.9 million Office of Naval Research definitive contract awarded May 23, 2024 to advance additive friction stir deposition and cold spray manufacturing technologies for warfighter sustainment; a $3.5 million Army SBIR Phase III contract awarded July 3, 2023 for ferrium steel armor development (completion December 10, 2025); and ongoing work on a $19.9 million Army Indefinite Delivery Contract for additive manufacturing research. Recent SBIR Phase I work includes a $149,953 award from the Shared Services Center (June 18, 2026) for the Alloy Simulation Toolkit for Robust Optimization in Low Gravity (ASTRO-GRAV) and a $149,958 Phase I award from DoD Shared Services Center (September 29, 2025) for multi-scale fatigue life prediction modeling of additive propulsion components.

Customer concentration reflects heavy defense weighting. The top five agencies account for 70% of award count and 94% of combined potential value. The Army's Materiel Command Research Development and Engineering Command leads by dollars (23 awards, $43 million combined potential value), followed by the Navy's Office of Naval Research (33 awards, $26 million) and the Naval Air Warfare Center (39 awards, $17.4 million). NASA Shared Services Center (12 awards, $4.4 million) and DARPA (4 awards, $3.9 million) round out the top five. The most recent vehicle award is a position on the Missile Defense Agency's Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) IDIQ (10-year ceiling extending through December 28, 2035, one $500 delivery order placed to date). Questek also holds an Indefinite Delivery Contract with the Army (W911W621D0002) with 3 task orders totaling $11 million combined potential value.

Questek holds a secondary sub-award footprint (2% of recent awards). Named subcontract work includes high-enthalpy aperture technology (HEAT) program technical and engineering services to Raytheon Company (October 13, 2021) and, as a sub-recipient, integrated computational materials engineering modeling and cloud-based design work under a Department of Energy EERE additively manufactured die prototype project led by University of California Irvine (November 5, 2024).

Questek's grant footprint is limited. Prime federal grant recipients include a $206,451 Department of Energy Office of Science Project Grant (June 27, 2022, CFDA 81.049) for conductor base metal design research and a Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency Cooperative Agreement for concurrent design of a multimaterial niobium alloy system for next-generation turbine applications (awarded August 30, 2021, ultimate completion August 7, 2026).

Activity has been stable across the past five years (4–7 awards annually 2022–2025), with only one award in 2026 to date. Four awards face ultimate completion inside the next twenty-four months (combined potential value $643 thousand), representing minimal recompete exposure. The company's $101.3 million combined potential value across 170 recent awards has obligated $97.5 million (96%), indicating strong execution velocity and agency confidence. Work is performed at Questek's Evanston facility unless otherwise specified (for example, a Missile Defense Agency SHIELD delivery order references Huntsville, Alabama).

QuesTek is a global leader in the field of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) and has proven that new, ultra high performance materials can be designed much faster and at lower cost than traditional trial-and-error development methods.

We have designed a family of high performance Ferrium steels that are flying as flight critical landing gear components on A-10, C-5, T-38 and T-45 aircraft, and being qualified for next generation helicopter gearboxes. They are being used in oil and gas, high performance racing and commercial aerospace applications.