The Research Institute (RI) is responsible for applied research and engineering programs, principally to meet the needs of Redstone Arsenal tenants and federally funded industry contractors. RI performs significant research efforts for government agencies such as the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Commerce, and both large and small industry partners. Research Institute efforts are carried out in close cooperation with customers, both on site at government laboratories and on campus.

The Institute staff has expertise in covering the life cycle of aerospace, homeland security, industrial, and defense systems. These include systems engineering and project management, technical risk assessment, software engineering, and reliability and physics of failure and modeling of business processes, including supply chains. In addition, the Research Institute staff has expertise in the development and management of international projects and in organizational design and the management of research professionals. The Institute aligns their research with modernization priorities of government objectives and provides valuable results studying the interactions of hardware with its environment at a wide spectrum of speeds including hypersonics, and has the capability to measure high velocity impact phenomenology.

RI, teamed with other leading universities, performs basic and applied research in Directed Energy and in modeling and simulation. It also is engaged in multiple initiatives to promote the development, adoption, and utilization of advanced manufacturing technologies. RI is home to the IDEAS Laboratory, an initiative to promote STEM across all regions with the adoption of innovative techniques for involvement of K-12 students and two-year and four-year university students.