Board Of Trustees Of Southern Illinois University

The Board of Trustees of Southern Illinois University, Office of Sponsored Projects Administration, administers federal research grants and cooperative agreements as a prime recipient institution, operating across 128 distinct federal agencies with no prime federal contracts and no involvement in federal contracting vehicles. This is a public higher-education research institution performing hypothesis-driven research and educational programming across life sciences, engineering, earth sciences, mathematics, and applied research domains.

Southern Illinois University Carbondale is headquartered in Carbondale, Illinois, and operates as a state-controlled institution of higher learning. The university competes and receives awards exclusively in full-and-open categories—no set-aside programs apply to federal grant recipients. The Office of Sponsored Projects Administration serves as the administrative hub for the university's research enterprise, managing both prime and sub-recipient grant awards from federal agencies.

The university's grant portfolio is heavily concentrated in basic and applied research funding. The National Science Foundation leads customer concentration by award count (153 awards), followed by the Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health (58 awards) and the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families (51 awards). By potential value, the NASA Shared Services Center anchors the customer base with 18 cooperative agreements and grants worth $3.7 million combined potential value, driven primarily by two large cooperative agreements: a $2.632 million SOLARSTEAM award (August 2023) supporting solar steam generation research, and a $314 thousand citizen-science eclipse broadcast initiative (April 2023). The top five customers by award count represent 38 percent of all awards in the source period.

The university's representative work spans concrete research domains. Recent NSF awards include a $261 thousand collaborative project on scaling evidence-based flipped-instruction teaching practices across eight regional institutions (September 2025), a $399 thousand chemistry education study on diverse student perceptions of flipped instruction (October 2024), and a $587 thousand initiative on sustainable edge data centers for AI computing (September 2023). From the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, SIU received a $547 thousand award for rapid bacteremia pathogen detection using immunocapture, microfluidics, and artificial intelligence (September 2026). The Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture funded a $650 thousand agricultural STEM education program for youth in Illinois and Missouri involving hands-on learning in sensors, drones, artificial intelligence, and precision agriculture (September 2026). The Head Start program through the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families awarded SIU $2.383 million on June 30, 2026, for early childhood education and family services delivery.

Activity has grown from 26 awards in 2022 to a peak of 76 awards in 2024, with 45 awards in 2025 and 44 in 2026, indicating sustained research volume across the recent period. Thirty awards face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months and present recompete opportunity for competitors and management attention for the university. The university's combined potential value across all awards is $6.9 million; the combined dollars obligated across all awards total $412.8 million, reflecting the institution's long-standing research relationships and strong track record of completing federal research projects.

The university serves as a sub-recipient on grant awards from other universities and research institutions. Recent examples include a subaward from Iowa State University on alternative pond-based aquaculture production systems (February 2024), a subaward from Wayne State University on hyperpolarized nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy (January 2024), and multiple subawards from the University of Nebraska on chlamydial protease research (February through August 2026). SIU also holds subawards from the Illinois Department of Human Services on nutrition assistance programs (SNAP, TANF, and social services block grants), the Illinois Department of Natural Resources on fisheries and wildlife management and monitoring across multiple ecosystems, and other state and federal agencies.

The university's sub-contracting footprint includes three task orders under the Information Analysis Center Multiple-Award Contract, representing air force research laboratory devices and sensing engineering work (May 2022, December 2023, November 2024) through prime contractor KBR Wyle Services. This represents the extent of the university's prime federal contract activity in the source period; the institution operates exclusively as a research grant recipient and cooperating research partner rather than as a federal contractor.