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)