The University Of Queensland

The University of Queensland, a non-profit Australian educational institution headquartered in St Lucia, Queensland, conducts federally funded biomedical, defense, and basic science research as a prime grant recipient and prime contract awardee across 38 federal agencies, with no set-aside designations. UQ operates through its Research & Innovation Division and holds four named subsidiaries: Leximancer PTY LTD, Jktech PTY LIMITED, Uniquest PTY LIMITED, and Vaxxas PTY LTD.

UQ's federal work spans applied medical research, defense materials science, hypersonic propulsion development, and biomarker discovery. Recent prime contract work includes a $672,924 definitive contract from Air Mobility Command (Army Medical Command) awarded August 2024 for research on improving performance of the sleep-deprived brain, a $338,364 firm-fixed-price contract from Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (DEVCOM) for chemo-biocatalytic conversion of lignin to high-performance fiber monomers, and an $88,317 RDECOM contract for PFAS removal sorbent synthesis and characterization. UQ holds a $1,530,276 Other Transaction IDV from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded October 2024 for superfluid wavetanks and machine-learning predictive modeling of nonlinear fluid dynamics, operating outside the FAR.

UQ's grant portfolio dominates its federal footprint. The Defense Health Agency funds the largest concentration of awards across CFDA 12.420 (Military Medical Research and Development program), including $1,156,726 for melanoma recurrence prediction through multiomics profiling, $1,120,707 for a first-in-class calcium channel inhibitor for metastatic prostate cancer, $1,117,328 for proteomic biomarkers in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis progression, and $1,339,480 for SPINEPASS (a physical therapy intervention for persistent headache after mild traumatic brain injury, with sub-award to Henry M. Jackson Foundation). The Department of the Air Force funds hypersonic and aerospace propulsion research under CFDA 12.800 (Air Force Defense Research Sciences Program), including $241,082 for ablation products in high-speed hypersonic vehicle near-wake investigation and $300,000 for ground-tests of single-stage access-to-space propulsion systems. The Office of Naval Research funds basic research under CFDA 12.300 (Basic and Applied Scientific Research), including $150,093 for unstart studies in fundamental supersonic combustors. The National Institute of Standards and Technology awarded $300,000 for adapting and evaluating cognitive assessment frameworks for federal law enforcement fingerprint examiner selection, with sub-awards to the University of Adelaide and Murdoch University. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funds vaccine development ($2.38 million for next-generation peptide-based medicines for malaria; grant extending through 2027).

Top customers by award count represent 52 percent of awards: the Department of the Air Force (39 awards), Defense Health Agency (28 awards), Department of the Army Medical Command (11 awards), Department of the Air Force Materiel Command Research Laboratory (11 awards), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (10 awards). The top five customers by combined potential value represent only 36 percent of dollars, indicating diffuse funding across smaller awards — the Army Corps of Engineers (6 awards, $1 million), Army Materiel Command RDECOM (8 awards, $947 thousand), CDC (4 awards, $377 thousand), USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (3 awards, $21 thousand), and NOAA (2 awards, $1 thousand).

UQ operates as a prime on 76 percent of awards and as a subrecipient or subcontractor on 24 percent. Recent sub-award work includes PFAS research conducted under Trustees of the Colorado School of Mines (SERDP ER23-3724, multiple fundings through 2026), laboratory testing and consulting on environmental remediation through Arcadis U.S., Inc. (ESTCP ER22-7313), and biomedical research sub-awards to prominent U.S. research institutions including University of California San Diego (vaccination and challenge studies for Group A Streptococcus), Vanderbilt University Medical Center (neural correlates of aphasia recovery), University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (endometriosis genetic and proteomic analysis), and Johns Hopkins University (LIFE microscope design and data analysis). UQ receives grant sub-awards from these primes to contribute specialized research capabilities — immunological assessment, GWAS analysis, spatial transcriptomics, vaccine development, and preclinical animal model work.

Activity has grown materially, from 18 awards in 2022 to 25 in 2024 and 23 in 2025, then declined to 4 awards in 2026 year-to-date, reflecting the snapshot nature of the source data. Nineteen awards face ultimate completion inside the next twenty-four months with combined potential value of $1 million, marking modest recompete exposure. SCI-reported service contract invoicing is minimal — $34 thousand in FY2022 across 1.7 FTEs, with no invoicing in FY2023 and negligible activity in FY2024 — because UQ's federal footprint consists predominantly of grants and research contracts that fall outside the SCI threshold or do not qualify as service contracts. The combined obligated dollars ($73.9 million) exceed the combined potential value ($6.6 million) by more than eleven times, indicating substantial performance against multi-year grant awards already funded; this ratio is typical for research recipients with mature grant portfolios.