University Of California, Davis

University of California, Davis, a public 1862 Land Grant research institution and tax-exempt education entity headquartered in Davis, California, operates as the primary recipient and principal investigator for federal research and educational grants across 314 distinct funding agencies, with recent work spanning environmental laboratory testing, veterinary diagnostic services, clinical research, and translational biomedical science. As a state entity within the California governance structure, UC Davis competes predominantly in full-and-open federal procurements without reliance on small-business set-asides, holding no SBA designations.

Recent prime federal contract work includes firm fixed-price delivery orders for environmental analysis and diagnostics: a $2.8 million Environmental Protection Agency delivery order for air quality sampling and laboratory analysis (Option Period III, September 2026–September 2027, performed in Durham, North Carolina); a $600 thousand National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration purchase order for a sector-specific drought early warning dashboard (Silver Spring, Maryland, through June 2028); and multiple Department of Agriculture Veterinary Services delivery orders for National Animal Health Laboratory Network diagnostic testing (foreign animal disease, pseudorabies, African swine fever, and antimicrobial susceptibility testing, performed at Ames, Iowa and Davis, California, through mid-2027). A $32 million single-award Indefinite Delivery Contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Integrated Service Network 21 (initiated December 2001, extending through September 2035) anchors UC Davis's healthcare delivery to Northern California veterans, with recent task orders for reference laboratory services ($152 thousand, FY2026) and network operations improvement ($2.7 million, through July 2027). A $30 million single-award IDC from the National Park Service (May 2026–July 2031) establishes UC Davis as the operator and filter-analysis service provider for the IMPROVE particle monitoring network across 146 U.S. sites, comprising 107 IMPROVE and 39 protocol sites.

Federal grant activity dominates UC Davis's research footprint. Recent recipients include: the National Institutes of Health, which funded $1.69 million Defense Health Agency research (September 2026–August 2029) into soluble epoxide hydrolase as a therapeutic target for chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy in prostate cancer survivors; a $2.0 million NIH Office of the Director Research Infrastructure Programs award (June 2026–June 2027) for acquisition of a wide-bore 3T magnetic resonance imaging scanner; and a $5.76 million National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences Cooperative Agreement (June 2026–May 2033) to establish and operate the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded multiple project grants addressing vector-borne and zoonotic disease mechanisms: $765 thousand for recombinant enhanced antiviral restrictors research (August 2026–July 2030), $744 thousand investigating Entamoeba histolytica trogocytosis in amoebiasis pathogenesis (February 2026–January 2031), and $483 thousand on transcriptional regulation of the microbiota-nutrition axis in psoriasiform inflammation (June 2026–April 2031). The National Institute of Food and Agriculture funded $4.31 million research addressing Fusarium basal rot in onion and garlic production (July 2026–June 2030) and $4.97 million for lettuce crop improvement through artificial intelligence and genome editing (July 2026–June 2031). The National Science Foundation's Division of Undergraduate Education awarded a $1.65 million STEM Education grant (October 2025–September 2030) for a social annotation platform integrated with Open Educational Resources repositories, and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences provided $2.0 million for research infrastructure upgrades.

UC Davis's contract vehicle portfolio includes the IMPROVE IDC with the National Park Service and multiple USDA Veterinary Services delivery vehicles. As a prime recipient and principal investigator, UC Davis subcontracts with other research institutions and collaborators—recent sub-awards include a Mayo Clinic-led EASE-REACT biomedical device program (November 2025) and collaborative research with Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University on the BRAVE bioaerosol program (October 2025). UC Davis also participates as a sub-recipient in larger consortium grants: Northwestern University's family genetic study of autism and Fragile X Syndrome, Drexel University's longitudinal follow-up of autism family cohorts, and Duke University's Alzheimer's disease multi-omics research initiative. Subcontractor roles on federal service contracts are minimal, with SCI-reportable data showing 0% average sub-hours share across prime contracts, indicating UC Davis builds its own delivery teams rather than engaging significant subcontractor labor.

Activity has been robust over the past five years—169 awards in calendar 2026 (through December 15) following 515 in 2025, 611 in 2024, 469 in 2023, and 458 in 2022. The combined potential value across all 9,834 awards totals $975.8 million, with obligated dollars reaching $10.95 billion (reflecting multi-year funding and award modifications). The recompete cliff in the next twenty-four months carries combined potential value of $19.4 million across 636 awards, representing moderate near-term expiration risk. SCI-reportable service contracts (federal service work above $150,000) totaled $2.7 million invoiced across FY2022–FY2024, with 9.0 FTEs in FY2024 and government-paid hourly rates ranging from $77.82 to $372.59 per hour (median $110.79/hr), reflecting the mix of technical, professional, and research staff engaged in federal service delivery.