The Morgridge Institute For Research, Inc.

The Morgridge Institute For Research, Inc., a tax-exempt nonprofit research organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, functions as both a prime federal grant recipient (49% of recent awards) and a subrecipient on federally funded research projects (51% of recent awards), delivering biomedical and computational research services across life sciences, advanced imaging, cyberinfrastructure, and data federation platforms.

The Institute's customer base concentrates heavily in biomedical and scientific research funding. The top five grantors account for 52% of recent awards: the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS; 13 awards), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID; 10 awards), the National Cancer Institute (NCI; 9 awards), the National Science Foundation (NSF; 7 awards), and the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH OD; 5 awards). The Institute serves 28 distinct federal agencies across the portfolio, reflecting broad NIH and NSF engagement.

Morgridge operates as a prime grant recipient on major cyberinfrastructure and life-sciences initiatives. On May 15, 2026, NSF awarded a $9 million Cooperative Agreement (CFDA 47.070, CISE program) through April 30, 2031 for the Fabric for AI-Driven Science (FABAID), a national-scale initiative that operates the Open Science Data Fabric (OSDF) to manage the lifecycle of scientific datasets, integrate distributed computing resources, and enable AI-driven research across academic and research communities using open-source Pelican and HTCondor platforms. Earlier NSF awards include a $599 thousand project grant for Kingfisher storage management infrastructure (Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, July 2022 through June 2025) and a project grant for the Pelican open-science data federation platform (September 2023 through August 2027). Morgridge also holds prime awards from NIGMS ($1.1+ million combined on cell metabolism and genetic fitness research, 2022–2029), NCI ($1.8+ million combined on optical metabolic imaging for cancer organoids and CAR-T cell therapy assessment, 2023–2028), and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute ($775 thousand on cardiomyocyte biomanufacturing quality control, 2023–2027), among others.

The Institute's subrecipient footprint centers on collaboration with university research entities. Morgridge subcontracts under University of Wisconsin System primes across multiple NIH-funded life sciences projects, including single-cell RNA sequencing analysis, fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) infrastructure, and multi-omics characterization through the National Center for Quantitative Biology of Complex Systems (NCQBCS, an NIH P41 Biomedical Technology Research Center). Recent sub-awards include optical imaging of neural stem cells, redox imaging validation of retinal organoids, cryo-EM sample preparation and data processing, and bulk and single-cell transcriptomic analysis under various UW System prime grants (December 2025–March 2026 cohort). Morgridge also subcontracts under Duke University (live imaging of bone regeneration in zebrafish, gene therapy for limb regeneration), Washington University (lipidomics and proteomics for intestinal HDL research, ongoing through year 5), University of Connecticut Health Center (distributed computing and cybersecurity for the Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank), Florida State University (cryo-EM algorithm development for tubular reconstruction), and Princeton University (data organization and management leadership on the Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics, IRIS-HEP) primes.

Recent activity shows growth: 11 awards in 2022 escalating to 19 in 2024, with 13 awarded in 2025 and 4 to date in 2026. Seven awards carry ultimate completion dates within the next twenty-four months, presenting recompete opportunity for competitors and recompete exposure for the Institute. The combined obligated dollars across all 84 awards (prime and sub combined) total $168.5 million, with the recent FABAID cooperative agreement anchoring a large portion of the 2026 pipeline.

Morgridge's capability portfolio spans four concrete domains. First, cyberinfrastructure and distributed computing: design, deployment, and operation of federated data platforms (OSDF, Pelican), storage management systems (Kingfisher LotManager), and integration with HTCondor distributed-computing infrastructure and XRootD frameworks for data delivery across the Open Science Grid and national research communities. Second, advanced optical imaging and analysis: label-free fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), optical metabolic imaging (OMI), single-cell metabolic phenotyping, and quantitative image analysis for cancer organoids, cardiomyocyte manufacturing, neural stem cells, and immune cell assessment. Third, structural and computational biology: cryo-EM algorithm development (cisTEM software), sample preparation, data collection and processing, atomic model building, and integration with NMR techniques. Fourth, multi-omics research: high-resolution liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for metabolomics and lipidomics profiling, isotopic-tracing metabolic flux analysis, and single-cell transcriptomic analysis. Morgridge conducts this work at facilities in Madison, Wisconsin, with the Institute positioned as a specialized research-services provider to academic prime grantees and as a principal investigator on infrastructure-scale federal initiatives administered through NSF and NIH.