Intramural Science — Atlas of Innovation

Definition

Intramural science is research conducted by an institution within its own labs using its own staff. A funding organization, whether a government or philanthropy, directly conducts research when sensitive data, specialized infrastructure, or the need for close control make in-house work advantageous over funding external researchers.

Why might intramural science be the right funding approach?

Intramural science is most useful when funders want to align research closely with policy goals, prioritize long-term stability, or be prepared for a rapid response. Counterintuitively, intramural science is well-suited for projects that require abnormally long-term support (e.g., nuclear stockpile stewardship) and projects that require an abnormally rapid response (e.g., medical countermeasures during a pandemic).

It is well-suited for innovation challenges where work is unlikely to be driven by commercial or academic incentives. Intramural science is a strong choice when the innovation challenge has at least one of the following characteristics:

Policy alignment: Intramural science is especially valuable when research goals are hard to fully define in advance. Since the work happens in-house, policymakers can guide and adjust it over time, refining methods and addressing issues like cost overruns in context. This level of flexibility and oversight is difficult to achieve when research is outsourced.
Long-term stability: Intramural science is also well suited to fields of research that require long-term funding and institutional knowledge (e.g., nuclear stockpile management). Intramural science can run longer than other long-term push tools like grants or contracts because Congress anchors them in statute with mandates meant to last. This provides stability on the timeframe of decades rather than budget cycles.
Rapid response: Intramural science can respond to changing and emerging policy priorities without waiting to award contracts and grants to outside groups, which enables the rapid response required to fulfill agency missions or regulatory mandates (e.g., the Congressional Budget Office’s review of legislation, the Food and Drug Administration’s review of drug applications, the Global Rapid Response Team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Intramural science can outperform other funding mechanisms if one or more of the following advantages are critical to success:

Credible data and highly sensitive information: Some research topics benefit from the extra assurance of credibility that government-collected data can provide. Examples include federal labor statistics, economic indicators, census data, and public health surveillance. Further, certain research involves classified defense, intelligence, and protected civilian information requiring strict security. Government agencies are uniquely structured to collect and securely handle this information.
Shared infrastructure with high fixed costs: When research requires significant initial investment with relatively low ongoing costs, the government can provide centralized coordination and long-term stewardship across multiple projects. For example, building a particle accelerator or developing large-scale databases can enable years of diverse research projects.

What can go wrong?

Because intramural science can operate outside competitive funding processes, even those that involve grant solicitations, it can face risks that external researchers do not encounter:

Limited competition and accountability: Intramural science projects face less external competition than private firms or grant-funded researchers and may be subject to weaker accountability mechanisms. This can reduce incentives to control costs, try new approaches, improve efficiency, and produce broadly usable outputs.
Talent recruitment challenges: While long term stability provides recruitment advantages, public-sector wage constraints can deter top researchers, especially for highly specialized candidates. Additionally, many researchers consider roles in academia or the private sector to be more prestigious than those in the public sector. Without sufficient budget or hiring authorities, intramural programs may struggle to maintain cutting-edge expertise in-house.
Institutional inertia: Once established, in-house programs can become difficult to shut down, even after their mission loses relevance or has been completed.

Intramural programs need proactive oversight, periodic review mechanisms, and clear exit strategies to mitigate these risks. Flexible hiring authorities and fellowships can help with talent recruitment, or governments can collaborate with external researchers through joint ventures.

National Labs

National laboratories are federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) that the US government owns and contracts the management of to external entities, often universities, consortia, or private firms.

This model dates back to World War II, when the Manhattan Project assembled scientists at government facilities with the mission to develop the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and other sites. After the war, these sites evolved into a permanent network of labs serving national security, energy, and scientific missions.

Unlike other common forms of intramural science, where research is conducted entirely by government employees within agencies, national labs combine federal funding and oversight with contractor-operated government facilities. This hybrid structure gives them greater flexibility in hiring, procurement, and partnerships while still serving public missions. For example, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Laboratories lead the nation’s nuclear stockpile stewardship program. Since stopping nuclear tests in 1992, the US has relied on supercomputer simulations and experiments to ensure the nuclear stockpile’s safety and reliability. This work depends on high fixed-cost infrastructure, sustained in-house expertise, and secure handling of classified information.

Examples

Many US federal agencies rely on in-house, intramural scientists to support their regulatory missions and advance scientific frontiers, including:

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Earthquake Engineering: NIST’s Earthquake Engineering Group leads the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), which sets American seismic-design standards. Researchers run high-fixed cost, large-scale experiments to generate structural data that informs building code updates. NIST’s intramural structure is uniquely positioned to fulfill this role because safety standards rely on credible data and a technical foundation that enables alignment across industry leaders and policymakers.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Program: The NIH Intramural Research Program conducts in-house biomedical research. The intramural program provides long-term, stable funding for projects that would be unlikely to attract sufficient private investment, such as decades-long cancer trials. The program has led to groundbreaking discoveries and 17 Nobel Prizes over its history. NIH’s intramural program proved decisive during the early AIDS epidemic. Because intramural labs could redirect effort quickly, retain staff scientists, and sustain multi-year clinical and virology programs without competing for grants, they carried out much of the foundational work in the 1980s that identified human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), mapped its progression, and enabled the first effective treatments.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): Weather forecasting relies heavily on NOAA’s high fixed-cost, shared infrastructure of satellites, radars, and other measurement devices, which private firms use to develop services. This public backbone lowers barriers for companies while ensuring a high-trust source for core forecasts and warnings.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus: The Janelia Research Campus is HHMI’s in-house neurobiology research center that supports long-term science (i.e., they have a “15-year research model”). They emphasize stable funding and shared technical infrastructure.

Several other approaches share features with intramural science, but are better suited to different contexts:

Coordinated research programs: Like intramural science, coordinated research programs concentrate resources on priority challenges and connect them with capable researchers. Coordinated programs bring the coordinator or program manager in-house to organize researchers across academia, industry, and government to address diffuse, complex problems. Intramural science brings the researchers and infrastructure in-house, building lasting expertise and capacity for specialized or sensitive work.
Research joint ventures: Joint ventures combine government expertise with private-sector resources and are particularly valuable when innovation depends on close collaboration with industry. However, joint ventures can introduce coordination complexity that intramural science can help avoid.
Fieldbuilding: When the goal of an intramural research program is to build research capacity in an emerging field, other fieldbuilding programs may be more effective to develop talent and expertise in academic and non-academic settings closer to where the work will ultimately be sustained over the long term.

Definition

Why might intramural science be the right funding approach?

What can go wrong?

Examples

Related funding approaches

Further reading