University Of Tennessee

University Of Tennessee doing business as Space Institute, a public 1862 Land Grant research institution and division of the University of Tennessee system headquartered in Tullahoma, Tennessee, operates as a prime contractor and grant recipient delivering computational fluid dynamics, high-performance computing, aerospace engineering, and advanced materials research to federal defense and civilian agencies. UTSI competes full-and-open across all work, with no set-aside designations applied to its recent prime contract or grant portfolio.

UTSI's customer concentration anchors heavily to the Department of the Air Force. The Air Force Materiel Command Test Center (AFTC) is the dominant customer, accounting for 62 of 226 total awards (28% of volume) and $39.3 million of the $61.9 million combined potential value across all recent awards — a 63% concentration by dollars. The broader Department of the Air Force pipeline contributes an additional 34 awards carrying $1.1 million in combined potential value. Beyond the Air Force, UTSI has worked with NASA (17 awards, primarily Glenn Research Center at $1.1 million combined potential value), the Department of the Navy (10 awards), the Department of the Army (18 awards), and the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (1 award, $2.4 million combined potential value). The top five customer agencies account for 62% of awards and 71% of combined potential value. UTSI also holds a recent $151 billion multiple-award IDIQ from the Missile Defense Agency under the Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program, awarded December 29, 2025, extending through December 28, 2035, though only an initial $500 delivery order has been issued to date.

Representative prime contract work includes a $12 million single-award IDC with the Air Force Test Center (performance through April 14, 2029) under which UTSI has executed multiple delivery orders: a $585,954 cost-no-fee order (February 25, 2026) for solver development supporting hypersonic simulation, a $317,355 cost-no-fee order (July 21, 2025) for unspecified aerospace research, a $776,481 cost-no-fee delivery order (July 1, 2024) for computational fluid dynamics and uncertainty quantification work under the HPCMP CREATE-AV KESTREL program, and an $82,676 cost-no-fee order (April 15, 2024) for uncertainty quantification in CFD. UTSI also holds a $369,234 definitive contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (cost-sharing, performance through August 1, 2028) for development of adaptive and parallel space-angle discontinuous Galerkin methods for radiative transfer equations, awarded May 1, 2023. Recent grant work includes a $157,000 National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering project grant (April 1, 2026 through March 31, 2028, CFDA 93.286) supporting development of novel structured glass-ceramic scintillator conversion screens for X-ray imaging in megavoltage applications, a $71,863 NASA cooperative agreement (December 2, 2024) under the Dual Use Technology Development Program for tailored diamond-like carbon coatings for dust mitigation, and a $66,131 NASA cooperative agreement (December 1, 2023) for high energy density sodium ion battery materials research.

UTSI's parent vehicles focus on Air Force Test Center IDIQs: the primary contract vehicle F4060000D0001 carries 31 task orders; IDC FA910115D0002 carries 27 task orders ($8.2 million combined potential value); IDC FA910106D0001 carries 21 task orders ($9.7 million combined potential value); and IDC FA910124DB001 carries 5 task orders ($1.8 million combined potential value). These vehicles enable streamlined task-order issuance across UTSI's core competencies in CFD, uncertainty quantification, digital engineering, and advanced diagnostics without requiring full and open competition.

UTSI's activity profile shows declining award volume in recent years — ten awards in 2022 declined to seven in 2023 and 2024, then five in 2025 and two through April 2026 — reflecting a shift toward larger-dollar vehicles (particularly the SHIELD IDIQ) rather than greater transaction count. Only six awards face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, carrying combined potential value of $618 thousand, suggesting minimal recompete exposure in that window. UTSI operates as a prime on 97% of its recent awards and subcontracts to only two named primes in the source: CACI Inc. – Federal (on a naval advanced product innovation and delivery sub task, awarded March 24, 2025) and University of Dayton (on a materials maturation for high-mach systems engineering sub task, awarded July 26, 2023).

Grant sub-awards position UTSI as a research collaborator under prime grantees: University of Massachusetts Lowell (metamaterial modeling for ballistic loading, June 27, 2024), The Ohio State University on two grants focused on high-speed flow and surface distortion effects (December 1, 2022, both ongoing), and Plug Power Inc. on an integrated membrane anode assembly project (November 9, 2021). UTSI's research portfolio spans computational science, aerospace propulsion, hypersonics, materials science, and biomedical imaging, concentrated in R&D-Defense (75 awards under PSC R&D-Defense Other) and Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences research categories (28 awards under primary NAICS 541710).