University Of Alabama At Birmingham

University of Alabama at Birmingham, doing business as UAB, is a comprehensive academic medical center and public research institution that receives federal funding as a prime recipient on research grants and as a prime awardee on federal service contracts and indefinite delivery contracts, with no set-aside designations applied to recent awards. UAB is a non-profit state-controlled institution of higher learning headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, serving as both a research organization and healthcare delivery system with substantial federal contract and grant portfolios spanning the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, NASA, and multiple civilian agencies.

UAB operates as a prime on 85% of recent awards (4,903 prime awards) and as a subcontractor on 15% (863 sub-awards), positioning it as a primary performer rather than a feeder to larger primes. The institution competes in full-and-open federal competitions with no set-aside activity in the recent award snapshot; its federal work is merit-selected on a competitive basis rather than set-aside-reserved. Across the federal contract and grant portfolios, UAB delivers research services, medical and clinical services, and specialized hardware and software development across biomedical research, cardiovascular medicine, infectious disease, oncology, neurology, aerospace engineering, and rural health initiatives.

Customer concentration is heavily weighted toward the National Institutes of Health and its component institutes. The NIH National Cancer Institute ranks first by potential value (302 awards, $436.9 million combined potential value), followed closely by the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (395 awards, $352.6 million), and the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (312 awards, $283.3 million). The Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Integrated Service Network 7 is a significant customer by both award count and potential value (154 awards, $51.8 million), reflecting UAB's role in providing clinical services to VA beneficiaries in the Birmingham region. The top five funding entities account for roughly 37% of recent awards and 46% of combined potential value.

On the contract vehicle side, UAB holds a single-award indefinite delivery contract with NASA's Johnson Space Center valued at $36.4 million (ceiling), extending through June 2033, for the design and development of the Lunar Freezer System—hardware and software to return temperature-critical science payloads from the lunar surface and Gateway Space Station. The first delivery order under this IDIQ, issued December 5, 2025, carries a value of $5.9 million and focuses on requirements definition and preliminary design. UAB also operates under Navy and other federal IDIQs and basic ordering agreements with cumulative task order activity, though these vehicles carry smaller individual order values. The institution's contract work on the Navy vehicles (IDC N0018908GZ249 and BOA N0018918GZ005) reflects ongoing research support services rather than primary development roles.

On the grant side, UAB's recent federal grant activity spans the full NIH portfolio—project grants, cooperative agreements, fellowships, training grants, and infrastructure awards—plus competitive funding from HRSA, NSF, the Defense Health Agency, and other civilian agencies. Representative recent grant work includes a $2.55 million NIAID multi-project grant (awarded August 2025) for novel cell and gene therapy approaches for HIV cure, leveraging HLA-E-restricted HIV-specific immune responses; a $2.01 million NIGMS grant (September 2025) investigating the PI3K-AKT signaling pathway and biophysical mechanisms of AKT activation under physiological and pathological conditions; and a $2.34 million NIAID cooperative agreement (May 2026) for the Congenital Syphilis Treatment Trial (CONSISTENT), a Phase IV randomized clinical trial comparing oral amoxicillin to standard intramuscular benzathine penicillin G in neonates. Research output also includes infrastructure awards—a $671 thousand NIH Office of Director grant (June 2026) for an analytical ultracentrifuge for biophysical characterization shared research, and a $471 thousand grant for a high-dimensional spectral flow cytometer (June 2026)—positioning UAB as a research resource hub supporting external investigators.

Service Contract Inventory data covering federal service contracts above the $150,000 threshold shows SCI-reportable invoiced revenue of $30.5 million over FY2022–FY2024 (FY2022: $9.9 million; FY2023: $10 million; FY2024: $10.6 million), with an FTE trajectory declining from 64.8 in FY2022 to 34.0 in FY2024 on prime contracts. Median government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable prime contracts run approximately $102.56 per hour, with a 90th percentile reaching $651.93 per hour (reflecting senior clinical and research labor), indicating that UAB's federal service work spans both front-line clinical delivery and specialized high-value scientific consulting. SCI records show minimal subcontractor engagement on prime contracts (0% average sub-hours share), meaning UAB performs the bulk of contracted work with its own internal workforce rather than subcontracting delivery.

The institution faces a recompete cliff of 488 awards (combined potential value $42.7 million) with ultimate completion dates in the next 24 months, representing renewal or recompete opportunity in academic research funding and clinical service contracts. Recent awards posted through early 2027 indicate active pursuit across NIH institutes, HRSA, NSF, and DoD portfolios, with particular emphasis on implementation science, health disparities, precision medicine, and translational research in cardiology, neurology, oncology, and infectious disease. UAB's federal award trajectory shows growth from 330 awards in 2023 to 490 in 2024, declining to 385 in 2025, reflecting the cyclical nature of NIH grant cycles and project completion patterns rather than competitive loss.