The Morgridge Institute For Research, Inc.

The Morgridge Institute For Research, Inc., a nonprofit research organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, operates as a prime recipient on federal research grants and as a sub-recipient on awards from lead academic institutions, focusing on advanced imaging, metabolomics, bioinformatics, and distributed computing infrastructure to support biomedical research. The institute splits its federal footprint evenly between prime (50%) and sub-recipient (50%) roles across 86 recent awards totaling $170.2 million in obligated dollars, with no federal contract prime or IDV presence—all work flows through the grant ecosystem.

The institute's capability portfolio centers on optical and label-free imaging technologies, single-cell and cell-population analysis, mass spectrometry-based proteomics and lipidomics, cryo-electron microscopy, computational biology and bioinformatics, and distributed computing infrastructure for research data management. Representative prime grant work includes a $9 million NSF Cooperative Agreement (May 2026–April 2031) to operate the Fabric for AI-Driven Science (FABAID), a national-scale platform managing the lifecycle of scientific datasets and enabling AI-driven research through the Open Science Data Fabric (OSDF) and services built on the Pelican platform and HTCondor software suite; a $131,832 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development project grant (August 2026–July 2028) supporting research on appendage regeneration signaling and transcriptional programs in zebrafish dermal appendages using live imaging, optogenetics, and mathematical modeling; and a $599,261 NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure project grant (July 2022–June 2025) for development of the Kingfisher framework's LotManager library to enable shared storage management across distributed computing resources. As a sub-recipient, Morgridge provides optical imaging, cryo-EM algorithm development, metabolomics and proteomics analysis, and bioinformatics support to primes including the University of Wisconsin System, Duke University, University of Connecticut Health Center, Washington University, Princeton University, and others on NIH and NSF projects spanning regenerative medicine, cancer immunotherapy, neural stem cell biology, structural biology, and distributed computing infrastructure.

Customer concentration is heavily weighted to the National Institutes of Health institutes. The top five funding agencies account for 52% of awards, led by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (13 awards), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (11 awards), and the National Cancer Institute (9 awards), with the National Science Foundation (7 awards) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (5 awards) also active. Activity grew from 11 awards in 2022 to a peak of 19 in 2024, with 13 awards in 2025 and 6 through August 2026; nine awards carry ultimate completion dates within the next twenty-four months and face recompete exposure. The institute's role as a sub-recipient to UW-Madison recurs across dozens of life-sciences projects, positioning it as a technology and analysis resource for academic primes rather than as a direct customer-facing vendor. Named prime grantees on Morgridge sub-awards include the University of Wisconsin System (the majority partner across cryo-EM, optical imaging, and bioinformatics collaborations), Duke University (on regenerative biology projects), University of Connecticut Health Center (on the Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank infrastructure project), Washington University (on multi-omics NIH U01 studies), Princeton University (on cyberinfrastructure initiatives), Indiana University (on metabolomics studies), and the University of New Mexico (on virology research). The institute competes exclusively in the federal grants space through open, full-and-open competition; no set-aside designations or contract vehicles appear in the award history.