MITRE manages six FFRDCs. The National Security Engineering Center, previously known as the C3I Federally Funded Research and Development Center until 2011, addresses national security issues for the Department of Defense.
MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) supports the FAA, an agency within the Department of Transportation.
The organization's Center for Enterprise Modernization, which focuses on enterprise modernization, was established as the IRS Federally Funded Research and Development Center in 1998, before being renamed in August 2001. Originally sponsored by the Internal Revenue Service (a bureau of the Department of the Treasury), the Department of Veterans Affairs joined as a co-sponsor in 2008, and the Social Security Administration joined as a co-sponsor in 2018.
MITRE's Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute (HSSEDI) completes work for the Department of Homeland Security, such as maintaining the federal executive department's list of the 25 most common software bugs. The HSSEDI was established in 2009, following passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and along with the Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute replaced the Homeland Security Institute.
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MITRE's CMS Alliance to Modernize Healthcare was established in 2012 as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Federally Funded Research and Development Center, also known as the Health FFRDC. The FFRDC is sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
MITRE has managed the National Cybersecurity FFRDC since 2014, following receipt of a "single indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity" $5 billion contract from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for a research center dedicated to cybersecurity. MITRE will support NIST's work "related to cybersecurity solutions composed of commercial components and the integration of technology to build trustworthy information systems for government agencies". In October 2024, NIST renewed MITRE's contract to operate the National Cybersecurity FFRDC, extending the arrangement through 2029.
Currently, MITRE holds the contract to administer and provide management to JASON, an advisory group for the federal government made up of scientists.
Health and Human Services
MITRE conducts research and development to solve complex health issues ranging from preventing chronic disease to accelerating health research, improving healthcare quality, and expanding health coverage.
During the 1980s, MITRE worked on a digital radiological imaging project for MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and an upgrade to MEDLINE for the National Institutes of Health.
In 2003, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) commissioned MITRE to expand on work in cybersecurity and enterprise architectures to benefit healthcare systems.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) competitively selected MITRE to operate the CMS Alliance to Modernize Healthcare federally funded research and development center (Health FFRDC) in 2012 on behalf of sponsoring agencies across HHS.
In 2015, MITRE managed an assessment and reports for the VA Choice Act, which improves healthcare access and options for our nation’s veterans.
MITRE launched research in 2017 that created Synthea, a Synthetic Patient Population Simulation that is used to generate realistic (but not real) patient data and associated health records in a variety of formats. Synthea, MITRE's open source synthetic data system, "mirrors real population information in terms of demographics, disease burden, vaccinations, medical visits and social determinants", and seeks to "mimic how each patient progresses from birth to death through modular representations of various diseases and conditions". MITRE's patient data set SyntheticMass, based on "fictional" Massachusetts residents, was formatted by Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and made available to developers via Google Cloud in 2019.
In 2023, CMS awarded MITRE a new five-year contract to operate the Health FFRDC.
mCODE
In 2019, MITRE and partners in the private sector released mCODE™, a core set of elements for capturing data in a standardized format in the electronic record of cancer patients to improve treatment, care coordination, and research efforts. In this effort to combat chronic diseases such as cancer, MITRE collaborates with organizations such as Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology to improve prevention and care for the millions of Americans living with cancer. MCode serves as both a common language and a model, helping facilitate a comprehensive approach to patient care and aiding research by enabling study of data throughout a cancer patient's experience and among different groups of patients. . More than 70 organizations implemented mCode by 2024.
COVID-19
In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, MITRE published a white paper claiming the number of confirmed and reported COVID-19 cases "significantly underrepresent the actual number of active domestic COVID-19 infections" in the United States. MITRE said the gap was because of "limited testing capability and the multi-day period of asymptomatic infectivity associated with the COVID-19 pathogen". MITRE managed the Coronavirus Commission on Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes, announced by the Donald Trump administration in June 2020, to "independently and comprehensively assess" responses to the pandemic and "offer actionable recommendations to inform future responses to infectious disease outbreaks within nursing homes".
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded a $16.5 million MITRE-led project to create an enduring open source tool called Sara Alert, for monitoring symptoms of Americans exposed to COVID-19. MITRE developed the free tool in collaboration with multiple national public health organizations as well as local and state health agencies. In April 2020, Sara Alert launched in Arkansas and was being tested in Danbury, Connecticut as well as the Northern Mariana Islands, with data being maintained by the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Sara Alert was being used in Idaho, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Virginia by the end of May, and Guam by October. Since January 2021, MITRE has co-lead a coalition known as the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), which is composed of over 300 technology and healthcare organizations developing a technical standard for verifying vaccination and other clinical information.
Locations
In addition to the headquarter campuses in Bedford and McLean, MITRE has more than 60 other locations throughout the United States and around the world. In New Jersey, two offices house approximately 60 employees, as of September 2020. Up to 70 percent of employees may continue working remotely, even after restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have been lifted.
MITRE's data center in Bedford, originally built during the 1980s and known as the High Performance Computing Center since 2015, was retrofitted with a refrigerant-based cooling system, resulting in lower operating costs and a higher compute capacity. In 2023, a large underground marine equipment testing tank opened on the Bedford campus. The company's McLean campus houses the Integrated Demonstration and Experimentation for Aeronautics (IDEA) Lab, as well as the Mobile Autonomous Systems Experimentation lab, which focuses on self-driving cars. MITRE's laboratory in Singapore, called Mitre Asia Pacific Singapore (MAPS) assesses and displays "various safety and air traffic concepts in preparation for the future".
