The Regents Of The University Of California

The Regents of the University of California at Riverside (UC Riverside), a non-profit, tax-exempt educational institution and Hispanic-serving 1862 Land Grant college headquartered in Riverside, California, operates as a prime recipient of federal research grants and contracts across 185 customer agencies, with a secondary role as a subcontractor on federal grants. The institution competes exclusively in the full-and-open market without SBA set-aside designations and does not hold any primary federal contract vehicles; it operates under a single Basic Ordering Agreement with the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery effective through July 2035.

UC Riverside's federal award footprint spans fundamental research, applied science, and educational programming. The institution received 3,338 total awards (prime and sub combined) over the past fifty years, with recent activity concentrated in FY2023–FY2026 (170–224 awards annually). The combined potential value across all awards reached $71.6 million, while cumulative obligated dollars across awards total $2.41 billion—a multiple indicating substantial prior-year funding maturity and the presence of long-standing multi-year research agreements. The most recent award is dated January 1, 2027, with 226 awards facing completion inside the next twenty-four months and recompete exposure of $9.4 million in combined potential value.

The institution's customer concentration reflects a research-intensive federal portfolio. The top five funding agencies by award count—National Science Foundation (778 awards), Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (138 awards), National Institutes of Health (113 awards), USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (110 awards), and NASA Shared Services Center (103 awards, $19.9 million)—account for 37 percent of all awards. When ranked by potential value, NASA Shared Services Center leads ($19.9 million), followed by Department of the Navy ($52 thousand), NSF, USDA APHIS, and NIH. This divergence signals that NSF, NIH, and USDA NIFA fund a high volume of modest-sized research grants, while NASA concentrates dollars in fewer, larger awards.

UC Riverside's primary capability profile centers on peer-reviewed research grants across biological sciences, engineering, computer science, materials science, agricultural sciences, and biomedical research. Representative work includes NSF funding for distributed optimization on special orthogonal groups (SO(3)) for multi-agent systems ($472,262, January 2027), MALDI-TOF-based microbial identification through machine learning and multi-omics ($420,520 from NIAID, November 2026), documentation-guided static analysis of software ($300,000 from NSF, October 2026), self-learning digital twins for robotic remanufacturing ($249,957 from NSF, September 2026), AI-driven decision support for water utility rate-setting under drought ($456,986 from NSF, September 2026), and multimodal imaging and therapy of ovarian cancer performed as a sub-recipient under University of Maryland Baltimore's prime grant (September 2026). The institution also executes USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative grants addressing rapid detection of foodborne pathogens ($591,499, April 2026), antibiotic-resistant bacteria and biosensors ($120,000 each, May 2026), and protective coatings for food contact surfaces ($290,238, September 2026). Work performed under Navy delivery orders covers tuition and fees ($15,985.83, August 2025) and miscellaneous research support ($4,808.57, June 2026), while DARPA funding supports the Embedded Entrepreneurship Initiative ($250,000, May 2025) and CARRELS platform development for microservices ($1.128 million from Air Force Research Laboratory, April 2025).

The institution places task orders primarily under five indefinite-delivery vehicles. The F0160079D0244 IDC has generated 27 task orders ($616 thousand combined potential value); N0018909GZ032 carries 25 task orders ($267 thousand); F0160094D0040 has 13 task orders ($71 thousand); N4740803D8406 holds 9 task orders; and 36C78619D0058 accounts for 2 task orders ($477 thousand). These vehicles span Department of Defense and civilian agency work but carry modest per-task-order values relative to the institution's grant-driven footprint, indicating that IDC leverage remains secondary to direct prime grant awards.

UC Riverside maintains a 93 percent prime-award posture across 3,099 prime contracts, IDVs, and grants, with subcontractor participation limited to 239 awards (7 percent). The Service Contract Inventory dataset, which captures federal service contracts above $150,000, shows minimal SCI-reportable activity: six total records across FY2022–FY2025, all as named subcontractor (zero as prime), with FTE trajectories ranging from 1.9 to 3.6 FTEs annually. This indicates that the institution's federal footprint is dominated by research grant awards rather than service contracts and that when UC Riverside operates as a subcontractor, it performs specialized research support functions rather than large-scale service delivery. Named sub-prime relationships include work under Northwestern University for research support to the Centers for Research on Structural Biology of Infectious Diseases (May 2026), Auburn University on SERDP PFAS transformation projects (February and November 2025), and collaborative roles under University of Maryland Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, University of Southern California, Clemson University, University of Illinois, Rutgers University, and others on NIH, NSF, and USDA initiatives spanning cancer imaging, AI for Alzheimer's detection, biomaterials discovery, citrus disease resistance, and water and soil science.

Federal grant recipients typically exercise oversight and direct research execution; UC Riverside's role as a sub-awardee under larger research consortia reflects its status as a specialized research institution contributing molecular, computational, microbiological, and agricultural expertise to multi-institutional projects. The institution does not report holding SBA certifications or pursuing set-aside competition. As a unit of the State of California under the State Controller's Office parent structure, UC Riverside operates under public-sector governance and non-profit status, rendering it ineligible for federal small business set-asides.

Activity trajectory shows moderate growth from 2023 (170 awards) to 2024 (224 awards) followed by a decline to 174 awards in 2025 and 101 in 2026. The sharp drop in 2026 reflects the snapshot date of October 15, 2026; the single award recorded for 2027 is due to the data cutoff after January 2027. Award recompete exposure of 226 awards ($9.4 million) due within twenty-four months signals substantial pipeline activity and renewal opportunity for competitors bidding against UC Riverside's established relationships. The institution's historical depth—first award in 1976—indicates four decades of federal research engagement and established agency partnerships with NSF, NIH, USDA, and NASA that yield recurring funding cycles.