Universidad De Chile

Universidad De Chile Vicerrectoria De Investigacion Y Desarrollo, doing business as Departamento De Contraloria, is a research-focused division of the Universidad De Chile based in Santiago, Chile, that receives federal research funding primarily as a grant recipient (47% of recent awards) and as a subrecipient on multi-institutional research projects (53%), with a secondary footprint as a subcontractor to prime research institutions on federally funded biomedical and geophysical studies. The organization is a non-profit research entity operating under Chilean law; it does not hold SBA certifications and does not compete for federal contracts as a prime contractor.

Universidad De Chile's federal grant activity centers on basic and applied research in three domains: atmospheric and geophysical science, supported by the Department of the Air Force under the Air Force Defense Research Sciences Program (CFDA 12.800); biomedical research in cardiovascular disease, infectious disease, and neurodegenerative disease, funded primarily through the National Institutes of Health; and regional epidemiological research on infectious disease, supported by the Office of Naval Research. Recent prime grant awards include a July 2026 project grant from the Air Force for study of physical memory in stochastic processes and Hurst exponents in Brownian motion and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck systems (ultimate completion June 2029); a $100,000 September 2025 Air Force award for high-resolution study of geophysical-induced magnetic variations during geomagnetic storms and substorms (through September 2028); a September 2025 Air Force project grant for energy transfer mechanisms at high temperatures in hypersonic flight regimes (through September 2028); and a July 2022 Air Force award of $100,850 for aerosol dynamics research in Santiago using a low-cost sun photometer network (completed June 2024). An earlier Air Force award in September 2023 supported multi-sensor, multi-space-object tracking using Lie algebra and low-cost telescopes (through August 2026).

Customer concentration is heavily skewed toward NIH institutes and the Department of the Air Force. The top five customer agencies account for 69% of recent awards: the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (11 awards), the Department of the Air Force (10 awards), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (4 awards), the National Institute of Mental Health (3 awards), and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (3 awards). The Air Force awards cluster around defense-relevant basic science; the NIH awards center on Latin American epidemiology and genetic research in diverse populations.

In its subrecipient and subcontractor roles, Universidad De Chile participates in multi-institutional research networks led by major U.S. research universities and medical centers. It subcontracts to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Inc. on the NIAID Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response (CEIRR) contract, conducting animal-human interface research in South America (sub-awards dated May 2026 and May 2025). It serves as a subrecipient to the University of California San Francisco on genetics of Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia research in Latin America, with Universidad De Chile personnel collecting DNA samples, serving as site principal investigator, and conducting local clinical data curation and analysis (sub-awards dated March 2025 and April 2024). It also participates as a subrecipient on grant networks hosted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center (CCASAnet, Hispanic Latino Lipid Consortium), Emory University (Hubs of Interdisciplinary Research and Training), New York University (behavioral measure development and testing in mental health service translation), and the University of Nebraska (physiology of hypoxia adaptation research).

Total awards across 45 federal sources carry $5.6 million in combined obligated value. Activity has been sporadic: two awards in 2022, six in 2023, seven in 2024, six in 2025, and two so far in 2026. Only two awards face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, indicating limited recompete exposure in the near term. SCI-reported service contract data captures minimal Universidad De Chile activity: one subcontractor record in FY2025 with 0.9 FTEs, reflecting occasional use of university staff under larger prime service contracts rather than direct federal service-contract revenue. The bulk of the organization's federal footprint is grant-funded research, not service contracting.