Federal research funding data sources, explained

If you want to understand the research landscape around a hub — which agencies fund nearby work, where the labs and fellowships are — there are four official, free, public data sources that do the job. GuestResearcher links to all of them and shows a few recent examples per hub; the sources below are where you go for the complete, current picture. (Figures on those sites come from the agencies, not from us, and are never a complete total when we show examples.)

NIH RePORTER

• What it is: the National Institutes of Health's official database of NIH-funded research projects.
• Best for: biomedical research, especially near NIH Bethesda and academic medical centers.
• Use it to: search funded projects by organization, city, or topic, and see the funding institute.

USAspending.gov

• What it is: the U.S. government's official source for federal spending, including research awards.
• Best for: seeing which institutions near a hub receive federal awards across many agencies.
• Use it to: search by recipient (institution) or location to see recent federal awards.

NSF Awards

• What it is: the National Science Foundation's official award search.
• Best for: science and engineering research at universities, including basic research.
• Use it to: search awards by awardee institution, state, or program.

Grants.gov

• What it is: the official portal where federal agencies post open funding opportunities.
• Best for: finding open opportunities you might apply to, across all federal agencies.
• Use it to: search current opportunities by keyword, agency, or eligibility.

SBIR / STTR

• What it is: the Small Business Administration's official record of Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer awards.
• Best for: research commercialization — small companies turning federally funded research into products, often spun out of nearby universities and labs.
• Use it to: search recent awards by agency (HHS, NSF, NASA, DOE, USDA, and more) or by company. Note these are national, by-agency records — not specific to a hub's location.

Other official sources we link to (and why some aren't wired in)

• HHS TAGGS — HHS grant awards. There's no public API to call directly, and TAGGS data already flows into USAspending (which we use), so we link to it rather than integrate it.
• SAM.gov / FPDS — federal contract awards. The API requires a key and access is moving behind a login, so we don't wire it in; USAspending already covers contracts publicly.
• Census / ACS — neighborhood/area context. The API now requires a key, and we deliberately avoid publishing local rent or housing-price estimates that could go stale or mislead.

How to read funding context (without over-reading it)

• Funding concentration is a rough signal of where labs, fellowships, and short-term research stays cluster — useful for deciding where to live.
• Examples are examples, not totals: a few recent awards don't represent everything an institution receives.
• Always confirm current numbers and eligibility on the official source itself.

See the funding context for each hub on the research-funding pages, then explore the hub you're headed to.