Federally Funded Research and Development Centers and University Affiliated Research Centers
Updated March 2021
Both Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) and University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs) are not-for-profit, private-sector organizations that are established and funded to meet special long-term engineering, research, development, or other analytic needs that cannot be met as effectively by government or other private-sector resources.
Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs)
| Primary Sponsor | Parent Organization | FFRDC |
| Air Force | The Aerospace Corporation | Aerospace FFRDC |
| USD(R&E) | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Lincoln Lab |
| Air Force | RAND Corp. | RAND Project Air Force |
| USD(R&E) | Carnegie Mellon University | Software Engineering Institute |
| Army | RAND Corp. | RAND Arroyo Center |
| National Security Agency (NSA) | Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) | IDA Communications & Computing Center |
| Navy | C.N.A. Corp. | Center for Naval Analyses |
| USD(A&S) | Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) | IDA Systems and Analyses Center |
| USD(R&E) | MITRE Corp. | National Security Engineering Center |
| USD(A&S) | RAND Corp. | National Defense Research Institute |
University-Affiliated Research Center Laboratories (UARCs)
| Primary Sponsor | University | UARC |
| Army | University of California at Santa Barbara | Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies |
| Army | University of Southern California | Institute for Creative Technologies |
| Army | Georgia Institute of Technology | Georgia Tech Research Institute |
| Army | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies |
| Navy | Johns Hopkins University | Applied Physics Laboratory |
| Navy | Pennsylvania State University | Applied Research Laboratory |
| Navy | University of Texas at Austin | Applied Research Laboratories |
| Navy | University of Washington | Applied Physics Laboratory |
| Navy | University of Hawaii | Applied Research Laboratory |
| Missile Defense Agency (MDA) | Utah State University | Space Dynamics Laboratory |
| USD(I&S) | University of Maryland | Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security |
| USD(R&E) | Stevens Institute of Technology | Systems Engineering Research Center |
| STRATCOM | University of Nebraska | National Strategic Research Institute |
| DASD(TRAC) | University of Alaska | Geophysical Detection of Nuclear Proliferation |
| Air Force | Howard University | Research Institute for Tactical Autonomy (RITA) |