Research Foundation Of The City University Of New York

Research Foundation Of The City University Of New York, doing business as Rfcuny - Brooklyn College, is a non-profit educational research support organization based in Brooklyn, New York, that acts as a federal grant recipient supporting investigator-initiated research across life sciences, physical sciences, STEM education, and environmental domains. The organization operates as a child entity under The City University of New York parent structure and receives 95% of its recent federal awards as a prime grant recipient (rather than subrecipient), with no federal contract prime awardees in the source footprint.

The entity's federal footprint is dominated by research and training grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Top customers by award count over the past several years are the Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health (31 awards), the National Science Foundation (28 awards), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (22 awards), the Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education (7 awards), and the Department of Health and Human Services (6 awards combined), accounting for 55% of recent awards. Representative prime grant work includes a $767,880 NSF Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) grant (CFDA 47.074) supporting fundamental research on cell size regulation using budding yeast, running September 2025 through August 2028; a $650,000 NSF Biological Sciences grant (CFDA 47.074) investigating DNA replication mechanisms in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii from April 2025 through March 2028; a $482,197 NSF Division of Biological Infrastructure award (CFDA 47.074) for the Brooklyn Urban Ecology and Environment Program (BUEE), a Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site supporting ten undergraduate students per summer from November 2026 through October 2029; and a $154,500 National Institute of General Medical Sciences grant (CFDA 93.859) for development and validation of next-generation allosteric PRC2 inhibitors for cancer epigenetics running July 2026 through March 2030. Additional representative work spans NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences grants for topological research ($122,662), chemical photochemistry ($450,000), and fluid dynamics ($167,711); NIH awards for ovarian cancer therapeutics ($700,000+), prenatal programming of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, neurodegeneration in frontotemporal dementia, and hearing system plasticity; and NSF STEM education awards for secure programming curriculum development and accessibility-focused computing instruction.

The organization also receives training and workforce-development grants, including U.S. Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education project grants for the Brooklyn College AANAPISI Project and the Upward Bound Program, and an NSF STEM Education grant ($365,116, CFDA 47.075) for the REU Site in Psychology and Neuroscience, running September 2024 through August 2027. A single federal contract prime award appears in the source: an $1.788 million National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities purchase order (August 2023) for the New York City Ghanaian Immigrant Mental Health and Well-Being Project, a mixed-methods community-based participatory research study with performance of work in Bethesda, Maryland, running May 2026 through January 2027. Rfcuny - Brooklyn College acts as a subrecipient on select grants from research institutions including Stony Brook University (IRACDA), Stevens Institute of Technology (coastal flood risk assessment), Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Alzheimer's disease research validation), the University of Pennsylvania (protein structure computational research), and Cornell University (Jamaica Bay resilience initiatives).

Activity has remained relatively flat over the past five years, with 10–12 awards annually through 2024, declining to 5–6 in 2025–2026, reflecting the source's capture window rather than a full career trajectory. Fifteen awards face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, carrying combined potential value of $1.8 million and therefore representing recompete exposure. The organization's capability footprint centers on undergraduate research training and mentorship across life sciences, environmental science, and mathematics; investigator-initiated basic and applied research in cancer biology, epigenetics, photochemistry, neurodegenerative disease, immunology, and environmental adaptation; curriculum development in STEM education; and community-engaged participatory research addressing health disparities and environmental resilience in urban settings.