The Regents Of The University Of California

The Regents of the University of California, doing business as University of California, Berkeley, a 1862 land-grant public research institution, receives federal research grants and contracts as a prime recipient across fundamental and applied science, technology, and education, competing on scientific merit with no socioeconomic set-aside designations. UC Berkeley operates as a non-profit educational entity headquartered in Berkeley, California, and serves 244 distinct federal customer agencies through roughly 8,591 prime awards and 734 sub-awards representing approximately $1.42 billion in combined potential value and $9.45 billion in total obligated dollars across nine thousand three hundred twenty-five awards since 1954.

The institution's federal portfolio centers on research grants rather than commercial service contracts—SCI-reportable invoiced revenue on federal service contracts above the $150,000 threshold is zero across fiscal years 2022 through 2025, reflecting that UC Berkeley's federal engagement derives predominantly from research grants, cooperative agreements, and other transaction awards. Recent representative research work includes a $5.75 million DARPA OTA for energy-efficient quantum computing architecture (FAST & CURIOUS: Energy Efficient Logic with Multiferroics), a $2.65 million DARPA OTA for quantum computing systems (HARQ), and a $230 thousand Office of the Secretary of Defense definitive contract for DNA sequencing and analyses of invasive terrestrial arthropods in the Indo-Pacific. Educational support work includes multiple small delivery orders from the Department of the Navy and Bureau of Naval Personnel for NROTC midshipmen tuition and fees, totaling tens of thousands of dollars annually. The institution also holds a DARPA multiple-award OTA IDV with a $1.2 million ceiling for silicon resonator long-term stability enhancement via localized annealing.

Customer concentration is diffuse across federal agencies. The National Science Foundation leads by award count with 2,060 awards; NASA Shared Services Center follows with 999 awards valued at $274.3 million combined potential value. By dollar magnitude, NASA Goddard Space Center anchors the portfolio with 146 awards totaling $859.8 million combined potential value, followed by NASA Shared Services Center at $274.3 million across 999 awards. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency places 125 awards worth $137.5 million. These rankings reflect UC Berkeley's established strength in space science, fundamental physics, materials research, and advanced electronics—areas where the institution operates as a leading federal research partner. The Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health funds 510 awards across multiple institutes, anchoring a substantial life sciences research footprint.

Activity remains strong but has moderated in calendar 2026 and early 2027. Awards per calendar year ran at 576 in 2024 and 370 in 2023, falling to 294 in 2026 with only nine awards visible in the source data through May 2027 (a snapshot limitation rather than declining trajectory). The recompete cliff exposes material risk: 590 awards with ultimate completion dates in the next twenty-four months carry combined potential value of $442.8 million, positioning competitors to capture significant open opportunities as UC Berkeley's current work completes.

Recent federal grant work exemplifies the institution's research profile. The National Science Foundation Division of Astronomical Sciences awarded $1.19 million for CASPER (Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research), an open-source radio astronomy infrastructure project that has enabled discoveries of exoplanets, black hole imaging via the Event Horizon Telescope, and gravitational wave detection through NSF NANOGrav. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences funded $999.997 thousand for an open-source declarative data management system for semantic multimodal workflows spanning videos and documents. The Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded $1.162 million cooperative agreement funding PANDORA, an AI platform for accelerating novel catalyst discovery in CO2 utilization. The National Science Foundation awarded multiple project grants in mathematics, physical sciences, engineering, and biological sciences, including $1.2 million for NSF-BSF collaborative synthetic dissection of signal-to-transcription dynamics in the Notch regulatory circuit and $630 thousand for collaborative research on kleptocnidy in nudibranch gastropods. The National Institute on Aging funded $549.260 thousand for advanced large language model-based AI tools predicting Alzheimer's disease pathology and cognitive outcomes. Federal grant work is concentrated in NSF core research programs (Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Engineering, Biological Sciences, Geosciences), NIH institutes (NIGMS, NIA, NIAID, NIDDK, NICHD, NEI), NASA Science Mission Directorate, and defense research agencies (DARPA, ONR, Air Force Research Laboratory, Army RDECOM).

UC Berkeley acts as prime recipient on the vast majority of its federal research awards and holds no recurring teaming relationships with other contractors on research grants. The institution does receive federal work as a sub-recipient on grants where other universities serve as prime grantees—recent examples include subrecipient roles to the University of Iowa on the Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellite (TRACERS) Phase A concept study, to Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory on space mission operations, to the University of Chicago on South Pole Telescope operations and science analysis, and to Stanford University on research spanning exoplanet imaging, risk-adjusted managed long-term care, and disaster recovery sentiment analysis. These sub-recipient relationships reflect UC Berkeley's integration into large collaborative research programs rather than subcontracting subordinate to prime contractors.

The institution maintains no SCI-reportable service contract invoiced revenue—zero dollars across 2022 through 2025—indicating that commercial service contracts above the $150,000 threshold do not characterize UC Berkeley's federal footprint. Sparse SCI records show 7.1 FTEs (eight prime, five subcontractor records) in FY2022, zero FTEs in FY2023, 5.0 FTEs in FY2024, and 3.1 FTEs in FY2025, reflecting minimal engagement in traditional federal service-contract labor delivery. This pattern confirms that UC Berkeley's federal role is research-intensive rather than services-intensive.

UC Berkeley competes on scientific merit across federal research programs with no advantage from socioeconomic set-asides. The institution's federal footprint is driven by peer-reviewed scientific proposal competition, established research infrastructure, faculty expertise spanning quantum computing, materials science, space exploration, astrophysics, climate science, biotechnology, and advanced electronics, and a multi-billion-dollar per year research funding portfolio that anchors the institution's mission as a premier public research university. Recompete risk of $442.8 million in the next twenty-four months positions the institution to defend and expand current research relationships through continued scientific contribution and to compete for new federal research opportunities across core NSF, NASA, and NIH programs aligned with its institutional research strengths.