University Of North Dakota

The University of North Dakota, Division of Research & Economic Development, operating as U N D, is a state-controlled public research institution that receives federal grants as prime recipient and federal contracts as prime contractor, competing on a full-and-open basis without small business set-asides. Headquartered in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and operating under the North Dakota University System as its parent organization, U N D acts as a comprehensive research recipient and contractor across 189 distinct federal funding sources spanning basic research, applied research, workforce development, and specialized technical services.

U N D's federal footprint is heavily concentrated in academic research and STEM education delivery. The institution receives cooperative agreements and project grants from NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense to conduct research in atmospheric sciences, biomedical sciences, paleontology, materials chemistry, quantum information science, energy systems, and climate-related environmental science. Representative prime grant work includes a $45 million cooperative agreement from the Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy (awarded August 2026) to establish enhanced oil production field laboratories in the Bakken reservoir; a $21.453 million cooperative agreement from DOE's Office of Fossil Energy (July 2026) for carbon dioxide capture and conversion test center capital improvements; a $1.999 billion National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award (September 2025) for graduate training in sustainable water and land resource management; and a $1.31 million cooperative agreement from the Department of Energy's Office of Cybersecurity (October 2025) for multi-modal security technology development using federated learning methodologies for electric substations, with sub-awardees at the University of Wyoming, Colorado State University, and Kirkwall Defense, Inc. On the contract side, U N D holds a $9.022 million Other Transaction Agreement with the U.S. Army Materiel Command's Research Development and Engineering Command (awarded September 2023) to design and develop handheld optical inspection systems for real-time chemical and biological detection, and a $14.875 million OTA with TACOM Life Cycle Management Command (September 2023) for fuel cell electric vehicle prototype design and integration.

Customer concentration is distributed across research and education funding sources. The top five agencies by award count—NASA Shared Services Center (108 awards, $32.6 million), the National Science Foundation (97 awards), the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (74 awards), the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy (60 awards, $3.9 million), and the Department of Energy broadly (57 awards)—account for 29 percent of awards. By potential value, NASA Shared Services Center leads at $32.6 million (108 awards), followed by the National Institutes of Health at $20 million (38 awards), the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy at $3.9 million (60 awards), and the Department of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery at $1 million (45 awards, primarily tuition and fees delivery orders). U N D's tuition and fees delivery orders for Navy personnel represent high-volume, low-dollar-value work; the institution's research awards are clustered at higher dollar magnitudes but lower frequency.

U N D competes and operates as a prime contractor and grant recipient almost exclusively; 88 percent of the 1,377 awards in the source are prime positions. The remaining 12 percent are subcontract and sub-grant positions, primarily serving as a research collaborator or implementing partner to lead institutions. On the contract side, U N D subcontracts to Leidos on a $3.2 million research support services delivery order and to The MITRE Corporation on National General Aviation Flight Information Database (NGAFID) maintenance and development work. Recent federal contract vehicle positions include an Indefinite Delivery Contract (N0014098G2501, 47 task orders, $1.1 million combined potential value) with the Department of the Navy and a contract vehicle under the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center of Excellence (1 task order, $1.1 million combined potential value). Activity has remained steady at 70–91 awards per year across the past five years (2023–2025), with 75 awards (combined potential value $23.9 million) completing within the next twenty-four months, representing near-term recompete exposure.

SCI-reported invoiced revenue on federal service contracts above the $150,000 threshold totaled $2.6 million across FY2022–FY2025 on prime records, with $1.8 million in FY2022 declining to $173 thousand in FY2025. The SCI dataset captured 6 prime records and reflects roughly 10 FTEs delivered to the federal government in FY2022, declining to 0.6–1.8 FTEs in subsequent years. Government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable prime service work ranged from a 10th percentile of $31.90/hr to a median of $143.43/hr and a 90th percentile of $1,941.12/hr, reflecting a mix of undergraduate and graduate student labor, professional staff, and senior researcher delivery. Across SCI-reportable prime contracts, subcontractors performed an average of 40 percent of total contractor hours, with four named subcontractors. The SCI footprint is a narrow slice of U N D's federal activity—the institution's broader federal portfolio emphasizes grants and cooperative agreements for research infrastructure, workforce development, and scientific discovery rather than commercial service delivery.