The University Of Tulsa

The University Of Tulsa's Office Of Research And Sponsored Programs Division operates as a private nonprofit research institution based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, competing as a prime recipient for federal contracts and grants across 82 agencies and operating predominantly in full-and-open procurements with no set-aside designations. The university delivers experiential education, materials science research, cybersecurity workforce development, and applied research across energy, environmental remediation, information technology, and critical infrastructure resilience.

The university holds a $20.8 million Other Transaction IDV with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) for operational technology and Internet of Things asset identification and management, awarded January 2024. Representative prime contract work includes a $3.85 million definitive contract with the Department of Homeland Security for experiential research and education curriculum development (awarded September 2023, running through September 2028), a $3.75 million IDV from the Army Corps of Engineers for virtual reality and smart installation experimentation and security analysis under BAA 22-0009 (awarded November 2022, completed December 2024), and a second $3.75 million Army Corps IDV for gas pipeline security pilot study and coastal engineering research under BAA 22-0010 (awarded November 2022, completed December 2024). The university also holds a $164,724 purchase order from the Department of Veterans Affairs for research assistance services (awarded August 2022, completed December 2024).

Federal grant work dominates the university's recent footprint. The National Science Foundation funds the bulk of research activity, with awards spanning cybersecurity education, artificial intelligence and machine learning, materials science, and STEM workforce development. Recent significant grants include a $500,787 NSF award (October 2026) for machine unlearning methods in generative AI models, a $1.72 million NSF Cooperative Agreement (July 2026) to serve as fiscal agent for the E-CORE Oklahoma Research, Innovation, and Opportunity Network spanning six institutions across Oklahoma's urban and tribal regions, a $599,656 NSF grant (October 2025) for detection tools for online scams powered by generative AI (with the University of Texas at Arlington as sub-recipient), a $438,871 CAREER grant (October 2025) for security and ethical challenges in AI-integrated crowdsourcing systems, and a $476,689 NSF award (August 2025) for solvation dynamics in lithium-ion batteries for ultra-low-temperature operation. The Department of Defense funds basic scientific research; the university received $1.5 million (July 2024) for ultra-high-temperature materials research and $598,078 (September 2025) for research on snapping shrimp orbital hoods and shock wave damping, with the University of South Carolina as sub-grantee. The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded $316,990 (October 2025) for the Modernist Journals Project digital humanities initiative with a sub-award to Brown University's Center for Digital Scholarship. The Department of Defense Office of the Secretary of Defense funds cybersecurity workforce development: the university received $353,089 (August 2025) for the Department of Defense Cyber Service Academy scholarships for service and $139,000 (FY2024) for the Department of Defense Cyber and Digital Services Academy.

Customer concentration centers on the National Science Foundation (66 awards) and the Environmental Protection Agency (26 awards), which together account for 40 percent of awards. The top five customer agencies by award count are NSF, EPA, Department of Energy (17 awards), Department of the Navy (16 awards), and Department of Homeland Security U.S. Secret Service (15 awards, $9.2 million combined potential value). By combined potential value, DHS U.S. Secret Service anchors the largest share at $9.2 million, followed by the Department of the Interior Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement ($540 thousand), Department of the Treasury IRS ($414 thousand), and Department of the Interior Bureau of Ocean Energy Management ($354 thousand). The university serves 82 distinct federal agencies, indicating broad but dispersed customer reach with no single customer dominating the portfolio.

The university operates 95 percent as a prime contractor and recipient and 5 percent as a subcontractor or sub-recipient across 351 total awards (prime and sub combined). Where the university subcontracts, it typically performs specialized research roles: as a sub-recipient under Oklahoma State University for perovskite solar cell characterization research supporting NASA missions, as a sub-recipient under Southern Methodist University for AI-driven intersection detection and signal optimization research, and under Purdue University for microelectronic workforce development. On the prime side, when the university engages named subcontractors, these relationships are sparse and research-focused.

The university's four-year award trajectory shows modest growth through 2025 (14 awards in 2022, 10 in 2023, 18 in 2024, 19 in 2025) with a decline to 8 awards recorded in the first ten months of 2026. The combined potential value across all awards stands at $43.8 million, though the combined obligated amount of $155.4 million (355 percent of potential value) reflects the university's model as a research recipient where grants are frequently renewed and extended beyond initial ceiling values. Twenty-one awards carrying combined potential value of $3.9 million complete within the next twenty-four months, creating modest recompete exposure.

SCI-reported federal service-contract invoicing totals $468 thousand across FY2022–FY2023 (with zero invoicing recorded in FY2024–FY2025 in the source data), delivered across roughly 3.4 FTEs in FY2022 and 4.7 FTEs in FY2023. Government-paid median hourly rates on SCI-reportable contracts run around $28.35/hr, with rates spanning $26.20/hr at the tenth percentile through $30.49/hr at the ninety-th percentile. The university does not engage subcontractors on SCI-reportable service contracts; all labor is direct-delivered. SCI is a strict subset of the university's federal revenue; the figure reflects only service contracts exceeding the $150,000 reporting threshold and excludes grant research, goods purchases, research equipment, and institutional operations. The university's primary federal revenue model operates through research grants and sponsored research agreements rather than traditional service contracts.

The top PSC categories reflect the university's research and education mission: Education/Training (23 awards), IT and Telecommunications (13 awards), and applied research in energy, defense, and other technical areas (14 awards combined across R&D PSCs). The university's primary NAICS classification is Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools (34 awards), with secondary activity in temporary help services and computer-related services supporting research operations.