Bayh-Dole Federal Lab Cooperative Research Agreements (CRADAs)

Bayh-Dole Federal Lab Cooperative Research Agreements (CRADAs) is a US industry channel for working with the federal laboratory system. The entry points to collaborative research with more than 300 federal labs, which makes it a partnership route rather than a standard grant competition. The Bayh-Dole framing matters because the mechanism is built around shared development and lab access. The route is sized from $50,000 to $5 million and the median award is $500,000. It is open to US-based for-profit companies, excludes nonprofits and individuals, and is set at TRL 3-9. The deal structure assumes a 50 percent match, cross-sector R&D collaboration, and no stacking of the same scope. The strongest fit is a company that already knows the research question it wants to solve and can work productively with a federal lab on a defined scope. Because the model is collaborative, applicants should expect a technical partnership with shared effort, not an unrestricted pool of capital. That makes the route useful for firms that need lab expertise, specialized facilities, or a co-development path into harder R&D.

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