University Of Memphis

University Of Memphis, a public research institution governed by the Board of Regents Tennessee, serves as a prime recipient on federal research grants and educational funding awards across science, engineering, health, and workforce development domains. The institution operates on a full-and-open competitive basis, with no set-aside designations, and delivers research and educational services directly rather than as a subcontractor or through extensive teaming arrangements.

The university's federal footprint spans 923 awards totaling $47.5 million in combined potential value, with $582.6 million obligated across all awards. The portfolio splits 81% prime awards (751) and 19% sub-awards (172), with activity levels remaining stable: 56 awards in 2022, 55 in 2023, 77 in 2024, 66 in 2025, and 42 awarded to date in 2026. The institution holds no seats on major government-wide IDIQs or GWACs; instead, its work flows through Navy basic ordering agreements (N0018919GZ043 with 10 task orders worth $2.1 million combined) and several Army and Office of Naval Research indefinite delivery contracts.

Customer concentration is highly diffuse across 145 distinct federal agencies. The National Science Foundation leads by award count with 179 awards, but does not dominate dollar value. The Department of the Army Research Development and Engineering Command ranks highest by potential value (10 awards, $7.2 million), followed by NASA's Shared Services Center (13 awards, $792 thousand) and the U.S. Geological Survey (43 awards, $158 thousand). The Department of Navy Bureau of Naval Personnel contributes 22 awards with minimal individual value (primarily NROTC tuition support). Award types cluster around education and training (54 awards under education/training tuition codes), basic research and exploratory development (32 awards in R&D–other research and development basic research), and energy and defense research (20 combined awards).

Capability portfolio centers on federally funded research and educational programming. Representative examples include a $21.2 million Office of Naval Research definitive contract (awarded August 2024, completing August 2028) to develop the UXS Degraded Environment Facility, a testing infrastructure for unmanned systems in challenging environmental conditions including wind tunnels, motion capture, and degraded-environment simulation (rain, dust, atmospheric challenges). The Army Research Development and Engineering Command awarded a $7.192 million definitive contract (June 2024, completing June 2028) for unmanned aerial systems research and development expanding ISR capabilities for wide-area intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. NASA's Shared Services Center funded two research grants totaling approximately $179 thousand for galaxy simulation and galaxy-merger classification work using two-dimensional stellar kinematics. The National Science Foundation has funded multiple CAREER and research grants including a $500 thousand five-year CAREER award (awarded September 2025) for temporal learning methods in healthcare decision support systems using machine learning on clinical text data. The university also operates seismic monitoring networks and geological mapping programs under U.S. Geological Survey cooperative agreements, conducts health science research (aging, cognitive decline, cancer biology, hearing healthcare) under National Institutes of Health and NIDA grants, and delivers workforce development and student support services under Department of Education TRIO and similar funding.

Forty-two awards with combined potential value of $28.6 million reach ultimate completion within the next 24 months, creating recompete exposure across both research grants and educational funding. The institution's SCI-reported federal service-contract activity is minimal: $74 thousand invoiced in FY2023 representing approximately 0.3 FTEs on a single contract, with no subsequent SCI reporting. This reflects the university's predominant focus on research grants and educational awards rather than service contracts. Across prime service contracts captured in SCI, the government-paid hourly rate ran at $131.59/hr (10th, median, and 90th percentiles aligned). Subcontractor engagement on prime SCI contracts averaged 0% of hours, indicating the institution conducts research and educational work directly through its own faculty and staff rather than through subcontracting arrangements.

The university operates as a sub-recipient on several programs administered by peer universities and research consortia, including work under Vanderbilt University-led I-Corps Hub programming, University of Tennessee health research initiatives, and collaborative NSF-funded projects. These sub-recipient roles place the institution alongside major research universities but do not constitute material subcontracting relationships in the service-contract sense. The institution's subsidiary structure shows University Of Memphis as a child entity of Board Of Regents Tennessee, the statewide higher education governance body.