Wake Forest University

Wake Forest University, a private non-profit research institution doing business as Babcock School of Business, receives federal funding as a prime grant recipient in basic and applied research spanning biological sciences, chemistry, materials engineering, mathematics, and medical research. The university does not hold federal service contracts; its federal engagement is concentrated in research grants and delivery-order tuition funding through the Department of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Wake Forest is organized under parent company The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority (Atrium Health), a major regional healthcare system.

Wake Forest's federal award portfolio centers on research grants distributed across the National Science Foundation (100 awards), the National Institutes of Health (35 awards), and the Department of the Army (37 awards), with the top five customer agencies by award count representing 46% of recent activity. By potential value, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute dominates the portfolio at $35.7 million across 20 awards, followed by Navy tuition delivery orders at $6.4 million across 48 awards. Research capability is concrete and distributed: the university holds recent grants for organic semiconductor device physics ($440 thousand, NSF Materials Research DMREF, October 2023–September 2027), limb regeneration mechanisms in axolotl salamanders using viral molecular tools ($390.1 thousand, NICHD, August 2025–July 2027), predictive frameworks for organic electrochemical transistors ($306.3 thousand, NSF Engineering, October 2026–September 2029), neuroimaging multi-omics integration for Alzheimer's disease subtyping ($526.6 thousand, National Institute on Aging, September 2026–August 2029), and conformal wearable radiation dosimeters for radiotherapy ($425.7 thousand, NIBIB, August 2026–July 2029). Additional recent work includes climate science and agriculture—plant heat-stress tolerance in tomatoes ($649.9 thousand, USDA AFRI, February 2026–February 2031), bacterioplankton as nutrient sources in ocean ecosystems ($335.1 thousand, NSF Ocean Sciences, January 2025–December 2027), and evaluation of epiphyte effects on tropical cloud forest water cycling ($150 thousand, NSF Earth Sciences, October 2023–October 2026). Medical and behavioral research rounds out the portfolio: osteoarthritis prevention in at-risk women ($multiyear cooperative agreement, National Institute on Aging, August 2023–July 2028), malarial anemia mechanisms and treatment ($363.7 thousand, NHLBI, July 2026–March 2031), and safety-centered multi-agent reinforcement learning for autonomous systems ($520 thousand, NSF Information and Intelligent Systems CAREER award, July 2025–June 2030).

Activity has grown modestly year over year—23 awards in 2022 to 38 in 2024, settling to 25 in 2025 and 23 in 2026. Nineteen awards with combined potential value of $518 thousand face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months and therefore recompete exposure. The university operates as a pure prime recipient on research grants; it subcontracts to other institutions in grant collaborations (Michigan State, Yale, Princeton, and others named in collaborative NSF and NIH awards) and serves as a subrecipient under prime grantees including NC Commission on Volunteerism & Community Service (AmeriCorps workforce capacity in health and nutrition programs) and major research institutions (University of Florida, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and University of Maryland Baltimore on clinical trials and specialized research). SCI-reported activity is minimal—one record as a named subcontractor carrying 0.1 FTEs in FY2024—reflecting that Wake Forest's federal engagement is overwhelmingly grant-driven, not service-contract-driven. The Navy tuition delivery orders represent a small and recurring stream ($32 thousand to $145 thousand per award) unrelated to core research operations.

Competitive posture: Wake Forest competes in full-and-open research funding. No set-asides apply to the university's prime grant awards. The institution's research footprint aligns with NSF and NIH mission priorities in STEM education, basic science, applied research with health or environmental relevance, and workforce development. The parent organization (Atrium Health) carries federal contracts and grants in healthcare delivery and clinical research, creating organizational synergy but not a direct competitive signal for federal contractors seeking Wake Forest as a teaming partner outside the academic research and education space.