University Of North Carolina At Greensboro

University of North Carolina At Greensboro (doing business as Unc-G), a state-controlled institution of higher learning headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, acts as a recipient of federal grants in basic and applied research across STEM disciplines, primarily through the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Education. The university does not operate as a federal contractor in the traditional sense; rather, it receives project grants to support research activities, workforce development initiatives, and educational programs, with a secondary footprint as a subrecipient on collaborative research awards led by other institutions.

UNC-G's research capability portfolio spans biomedical sciences (including virology, immunology, neuroscience, and public health), chemistry and materials science, agricultural and environmental science, computer science and engineering, mathematics and statistics, and education research. Recent representative work includes a $1.329 million National Institute of General Medical Sciences award (April 2026) to develop cost-effective workflows for unsaturated lipidomics analysis through novel ion chemistry, a $1.446 million National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases award (September 2025) for research on behavioral and chemical ecology of sand fly oviposition site selection with subrecipient collaborations at North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T, a $979 thousand Health Resources and Services Administration award (September 2025) for nursing workforce expansion and retention programming, and a $650 thousand Department of Agriculture award (April 2026) to develop dual-function sorbent-based remediation technology for agricultural water reclamation. The university also hosts regional conferences and professional development initiatives: a $189 thousand NSF award (August 2024) to manage the annual NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Grantees Conference, and multiple REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) site awards in data analytics, chemistry, and graph learning.

Customer concentration reflects UNC-G's research mission. The top five customer agencies by award count account for approximately 34% of recent awards, led by the National Science Foundation (110 awards across basic and applied research programs), the National Institutes of Health (37 awards across multiple institutes), and the Health Resources and Services Administration (20 awards for workforce training and education). By dollar value, the Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences and Office of Elementary and Secondary Education anchor the potential-value ranking with $56 million and $22.2 million respectively, reflecting significant funding for education research and policy implementation initiatives. The divergence between volume and dollars reflects a mix of smaller NSF research grants and larger Department of Education cooperative agreements and contracts.

The university's grant activity shows moderate decline in recent years: 39 awards in calendar 2023, rising to 57 in 2024, then declining to 35 in 2025, 22 in 2026, and 1 award dated in 2027 within the source data window. Twenty-nine awards reach ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months and face recompete exposure. UNC-G operates as a prime recipient on the vast majority of its awards (82% as prime; 18% as subrecipient), demonstrating institutional capacity to manage federal research and training grants independently. As a subrecipient, the university collaborates on multi-institutional research projects led by peers such as Child Trends Incorporated, Vanderbilt University, North Carolina State University, and other research universities.

The university's federal service contract activity, captured in the Service Contract Inventory, is limited: three service contracts above the $150,000 reporting threshold generated $5.2 million in invoiced revenue across FY2022–FY2024 (FY2022: $1.8 million; FY2023: $1.7 million; FY2024: $1.7 million), with contract-level staffing ranging from 7.1 to 9.1 FTEs. Government-paid hourly rates on those service contracts cluster around $92/hr (median), with a range from $91/hr (10th percentile) to $104/hr (90th percentile), reflecting professional and technical labor delivery. The university maintains a GSA Schedule with twenty-eight active labor categories spanning administrative, professional, research, and management roles, priced from $37.32/hr (entry-level administrative support) to $158.85/hr (senior director-level leadership), with no security clearance requirements across the schedule. The Service Contract Inventory shows minimal subcontracting: approximately 10% of hours on SCI-reportable prime contracts were performed by subcontractors, with three named subcontractors across the inventory period. UNC-G's federal work is overwhelmingly research-focused rather than service-contract-based; the institution functions as a research university recipient of federal grants, not as a federal contractor or vendor.