Linda Smith

Linda E. Smith serves as a secondary procurement specialist within the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), supporting the agency’s mission to advance scientific research on substance use disorders through strategic acquisition of technical and research-enabling services. While not the primary contracting officer, she plays a critical role in facilitating the procurement lifecycle for complex scientific instruments, laboratory services, and data-driven research tools. Her work ensures alignment between NIDA’s research priorities and the acquisition of high-precision equipment, analytical platforms, and software solutions that underpin neurobiological and behavioral studies. She routinely supports solicitations under FAR Part 15, with emphasis on performance-based contracting and scientific technical evaluation criteria. Smith maintains consistent working relationships with leading academic and research institutions, including McLean Hospital Corporation, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, the University of Miami, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. These partnerships reflect a strong reliance on university-affiliated research centers and specialized laboratories to deliver cutting-edge scientific services, clinical trial support, and data analysis capabilities. Her procurement patterns favor long-term, multi-year research collaborations over transactional vendor engagements, emphasizing scientific rigor and institutional capacity. Her contracting portfolio is overwhelmingly non-set-aside, with 94.8% of awards issued under full and open competition, indicating a primary focus on technical merit and scientific capability rather than socioeconomic preferences. Only 5.2% of awards are designated as total small business set-asides, suggesting a selective but intentional approach to small business participation when aligned with specialized research needs. Smith’s procurement focus centers on NAICS 334516 (analytical laboratory instrument manufacturing) and 811210 (electronic and precision equipment repair and maintenance), reflecting NIDA’s dependence on high-end neuroimaging systems, chromatography platforms, and instrumentation maintenance. She also supports software publishers (513210) and testing laboratories (541380) that enable data acquisition, modeling, and validation for addiction research, demonstrating deep technical fluency in neuroscience-enabled procurement.