Walter Reed Army Institute of Research

''This article is about the U.S. Army medical research institute (not the hospital). Otherwise, see Walter Reed (disambiguation).''

The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) is the largest biomedical research facility administered by the U.S. Department of Defense. The institute is centered at the Forest Glen Annex of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), part of the unincorporated Silver Spring urban area in Maryland just north of Washington, DC, but it is a subordinate unit of the  U. S. Army Medical Research and Material Command (USAMRMC), headquartered at Fort Detrick, MD, USA. At Forest Glen, the WRAIR has shared a large, modern laboratory and administrative facility, the Sen Daniel K. Inouye Building, also known as Building 503, with the Naval Medical Research Center since 1999.

Institute Mandate
Basic and applied medical research supporting U.S. military operations is the focus of WRAIR leaders and scientists. The institute fosters a unique understanding of military medical needs and environments, including the exposures (diseases and physical stresses) that troops encounter and the performance requirements of a deployed military force. Despite the focus on the military, however, the institute has historically also incidentally addressed and solved a variety of non-military medical problems prevalent in the United States and the wider world. It is particularly well known for advances in the field of tropical and infectious disease medicine.

Detachments elsewhere in the United States
The WRAIR commands specialized detachments in Texas and Illinois

Special Foreign Activities
The WRAIR commands laboratory and clinical facilities in Asia, Africa, and Europe
 * Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS), Bangkok, Thailand
 * United States Army Medical Research Unit-Kenya (USAMRU-K), Nairobi, Kenya

History of the WRAIR

 * For the pre-1954 history of WRAIR's predecessor institutions, see Army Medical School.

The WRAIR traces its institutional heritage back to the Army Medical School, founded by U.S. Army Surgeon General George Sternberg in 1893, by some reckonings the first school of public health and preventive medicine in the world.

After a series of name changes, the organization became the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1953.