Utah State University

Utah State University (doing business as USU), a 1862 land-grant public research institution headquartered in Logan, Utah, acts as a prime recipient and contractor for federal research, extension, and service delivery programs across agriculture, environmental sciences, health, defense technology, and space exploration. The university does not compete under set-asides and pursues a full-and-open competitive posture across its federal footprint, operating as a direct federal contractor and grant recipient rather than as a subcontractor to other primes, with 92 percent of its awards structured as prime positions.

USU's concrete federal capability spans agricultural research and extension (livestock health diagnostics, pest management, breeding and genomics, water quality and aquatic resource monitoring), biomedical and infectious disease research (vaccine development, viral screening, antimicrobial testing), environmental sciences and natural resource management (water resource modeling, forest and rangeland research, climate adaptation), aerospace and space technology (biomaterial development for maritime and space applications, advanced instrumentation), and STEM education research and curriculum development. Representative work includes a $30 million delivery order from USDA Veterinary Services for National Animal Health Laboratory Network diagnostic testing services including highly pathogenic avian influenza and scrapie testing (performance in Ames, Iowa and Logan, Utah, through April 2027); an $804,708 delivery order from Naval Sea Systems Command for biomaterial protein and fiber development under a $4.1 million indefinite delivery vehicle (performance through November 2026); a $1.878 million purchase order from Kennedy Space Center for design, documentation, and fabrication of the Utah Reusable Root Module for the International Space Station (sole-source award, performance through March 2027); a $653,618 delivery order from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for comprehensive viral screening panel under the In Vitro Assessments of Antimicrobial Activity indefinite delivery vehicle (completion December 2025); and federal grant awards including a $618,387 NSF grant for longitudinal research on AI tools in engineering education (September 2026–August 2030), a $749,984 USDA NIFA grant for pesticide risk assessments in solitary bee species (August 2026–July 2030), and a $1.62 million Defense Health Agency grant for a randomized controlled trial of online self-guided Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for military caregivers (July 2026–June 2030).

Customer concentration tracks heavily with USDA agencies and NSF. The top five funding agencies by award count represent 30 percent of all awards and include the Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (341 awards), National Science Foundation (304 awards), Department of the Air Force (264 awards), USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (133 awards, $68 thousand combined potential value), and DOD Missile Defense Agency (117 awards). By potential value, the top five funding sources account for 58 percent of combined potential value, led by the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (92 awards, $309.6 million combined potential value), NASA Shared Services Center (84 awards, $19.9 million), DOI Bureau of Land Management National Office (42 awards, $9.2 million), USDA Agricultural Research Service (44 awards, $488 thousand), and USGS Office of Acquisitions and Grants (43 awards, $71 thousand). The concentration split reveals a two-tier customer base: NIAID anchors the majority of research dollars, while NIFA and NSF drive award volume across distributed, smaller-value federal extension and research capacity grants.

USU holds positions on multiple indefinite delivery vehicles including firm fixed-price indefinite delivery contracts F1962883C0056 (49 task orders), INICMK0E050010 (44 task orders, $723 thousand combined potential value), F1962881C0123 (33 task orders), 140L0618D0016 (31 task orders, $1.8 million combined potential value), and HQ000600D0006 (29 task orders). The university also operates a single-award Bureau of Land Management Aquatic Resources Program indefinite delivery vehicle worth $2 million ceiling, through April 2030, under which seven task orders have been issued to date, collectively obligating approximately $234,115 for water quality analysis, macroinvertebrate identification, and laboratory services across BLM regional offices.

Recent activity shows growth followed by moderation: 139 awards in 2022, 138 in 2023, 268 in 2024, 178 in 2025, and 55 recorded through September 2026 (baseline for year-to-date comparison). One hundred sixty-seven awards with ultimate completion dates within the next twenty-four months carry combined potential value of $16.2 million, representing moderate recompete exposure across extension grants and research capacity funding vehicles. SCI-reported invoiced revenue on prime federal service contracts totaled $3.7 million in FY2022 and $2.7 million in FY2024 (zero invoicing recorded in FY2023 in the source data), with government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable work ranging from a 10th percentile of $12.49/hr to a median of $71.26/hr and a 90th percentile of $185.76/hr. Across SCI-reportable prime contracts, subcontractors performed approximately 4 percent of total contractor hours, with two named subcontractors appearing in the dataset, indicating USU builds its own delivery teams rather than relying heavily on subcontractors. USU itself appears as a named subcontractor to NMC, Inc. on an ESTCP project for machine learning applications in archaeological survey and risk modeling (September 2025), and as a sub-recipient on numerous USDA NIFA grants administered through university consortia and state agencies.

The corporate structure includes multiple registered business entities under the parent Utah State University designation, including Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory (a manufacturer and nonprofit organization with space research focus), Utah State University Aspire Foundation, and Utah State University Inc., reflecting the university's diversified research and technology transfer operations across multiple administrative entities and affiliated foundations.