Aside from student financial aid, the federal government funds universities with grants and contracts. One major way universities use this funding is for research and development (R&D). In FY 2023, federal dollars supported $59.6 billion of university R&D expenses.
The fields that received the most funding in 2023 were life sciences and engineering. Life sciences programs, the study of the nature and function of living things, received $33.9 billion, or 56.9% of federal grant and contract funding. Engineering applies math and physics to solve practical problems by designing, building, and improving structures, systems, and processes. Engineering R&D received $10.9 billion, or 18.3% of federal funding.
University R&D work covers computer and information sciences; geosciences, atmospheric sciences, and ocean sciences; life sciences; math and statistics; physical sciences; psychology; social sciences; engineering; sciences nec (meaning “not elsewhere classified,” sciences that don’t fit into other categories) and non-science and engineering fields.
Subscribe to get unbiased, data-driven insights sent to your inbox weekly.
What are grant and contract funding?
Grant funding supports public projects or services authorized by federal law. For example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—a part of the Department of Health and Human Services—awards grants to fund research aimed at reducing the spread of communicable diseases. Funding for this type of research is authorized under the Public Health Service Act.
Contract funding is paid in exchange for a specific good or service for the federal government; the federal government contracts with a university much like it would with a private company, to fulfill a defined need. The funding supports a particular project, like NASA’s contracts with universities to design and test new prototypes or conduct technical studies.
Which schools spend the most money?
Twenty universities spent more than a third of total federal R&D expenses in FY 2023. Another 640 universities spent the remaining two-thirds of federal R&D funds.
Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MD) had the most federally funded R&D expenses, at $3.32 billion, 2.8 times higher than the next-highest university. Forty three percent of that went to engineering, and 27.0% to life sciences. The remaining 30% was split between all other research and development categories.
Four other schools spent more than $1 billion in federal money for R&D: the University of Washington, Seattle ($1.19B); the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA) and University of California, San Diego ($1.08B each); and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor ($1.04B).
For 17 of these 20 schools, the biggest share of funding went to life sciences. The University of California, San Francisco, allocated 95.2% of its federal funding to life sciences, the most of any school.
Of the remaining three – Johns Hopkins, Georgia Tech, and Penn State – the bulk of funds were allocated to engineering.
Which federal agencies fund universities?
In fiscal year 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Energy (DOE) each committed over $100 billion to universities in grants and contracts. They’re the only two federal agencies exceeding $100 billion.
HHS funds primarily through grants, and DOE funds primarily through contracts.
The HHS is the largest grant-making federal agency in the US, and university grant funding is channeled through sub-agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). HHS research grants fund public health research including cancer research, mental health research, and drug and alcohol studies.
The DOE has longstanding contracts with universities such as Stanford University, whose DOE contract to operate and maintain an on-site linear accelerator for physics and energy research was first established in 1962. The DOE has also established university contracts as recently as 2024, funding the University of Chicago’s accelerator laboratory.
Federal agencies may be shifting their contracting strategies: In April 2025, the DOE published a press release announcing a shift in funding focus toward innovation and research projects and away from facility upgrades. Similarly, in March 2025, HHS published a list of grants it had terminated, some of which had previously been awarded to universities.
Learn more about public school funding and get the data directly in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter.
Keep exploring
Page sources and methodology
All of the data on the page was sourced directly from government agencies. The analysis and final review was performed by USAFacts.
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
Federally financed higher education R&D expenditures, ranked by all federal R&D expenditures, by R&D field: FY 2023
usaspending.gov
Prime Awards and Transactions