Research Foundation Of The City University Of New York

Research Foundation Of The City University Of New York, doing business as Rfcuny - Hunter College, is a non-profit fiscal administrator for the City University of New York system that acts as prime recipient on federal research grants across life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, and education disciplines, competing in the full-and-open marketplace without set-aside designation. RFCUNY operates as the research administration entity for Hunter College, a minority-serving institution, and executes federally funded research through both direct prime awards and collaborative sub-award arrangements with leading research universities.

RFCUNY's capability portfolio centers on academic and scientific research administration and delivery across biomedical sciences, materials science, quantum information systems, environmental science, and STEM education. Recent representative work includes a $4.9 million cooperative agreement with NASA for the Hunter College Center for Advanced Energy Storage for Space (completion September 2029); a $2.999 million NSF Project Grant for NY-RAMP, a program diversifying the national biology workforce through transdisciplinary bioscience training (completion July 2027); and a $949,953 NSF award investigating non-canonical translation mechanisms in human mRNA under cellular stress (completion July 2026). RFCUNY also administers grant awards in colorectal cancer molecular imaging, HIV prevention and care interventions, neurodegeneration pathways, quantum sensing networks, and climate adaptation policy research, reflecting a broad research footprint spanning NIH institutes, NSF directorates, NASA, and the Department of Energy.

Customer concentration is distributed across federal research agencies. The top five funding entities—National Institutes of Health (57 awards across multiple institutes), National Science Foundation (52 awards), NASA Shared Services Center (29 awards, $7.8 million combined potential value), the National Institute of Mental Health (26 awards), and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (26 awards)—account for approximately 43% of awards by count and 96% of combined potential value. This multi-agency distribution reflects RFCUNY's role as a research administrator serving diverse scientific communities rather than a single-mission vendor.

RFCUNY carries no federal contract IDVs or contract vehicles in its name; all work flows through grant mechanisms from federal agencies and through sub-award relationships with prime research institutions. The organization appears on sub-award vehicles primarily as fiscal administrator and research partner to universities anchoring larger collaborative efforts—including roles as sub-recipient on NIH and NSF grants led by Columbia University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Florida, MIT, and others. Recent sub-award work includes contributing synthetic chemistry support to opioid use disorder therapeutic discovery (subaward from Northeastern University under NIH funding), spectroscopic characterization of actinide extractions in nuclear energy research (subaward from University of Florida under DOE), and participation in the COMMUNITY Center for precision medicine and cancer prevention (subaward from Columbia University under NIH).

Activity has grown modestly over the past five years, rising from 29 awards in 2022 to a peak of 47 in 2024, then moderating to 36 in 2025 and 22 through December 2026 (partial year). Twenty-nine awards face completion within the next twenty-four months, carrying combined potential value of $893 thousand and representing moderate recompete exposure. RFCUNY competes continuously in the federal research grant marketplace and does not leverage set-aside vehicles or small-business designations. The organization's competitive posture is unrestricted full-and-open, grounded in its tax-exempt status and its mission as fiscal administrator for a public university system serving a majority-minority student population in New York City.