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Tag: Innovation Campus

Va. Tech Innovation Campus building opening delayed

The opening of the first academic building on Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus has been delayed to spring 2025, the university announced Thursday.

Virginia Tech started construction on the first academic building of the $1 billion campus in Alexandria in September 2021 and had planned to open the $302 million building this August. The delay on the 300,000-square-foot, 11-story building is due to construction supply chain issues, according to a university news release. Bethesda, Maryland-based JBG Smith Properties is the building developer.

Virginia Tech opened the Innovation Campus headquarters on the ground floor of 3000 Potomac Ave. in 2021, adjacent to the site of the future 3.5-acre campus. It houses executive offices and a café-style area.

Graduate students will continue to attend Innovation Campus classes at Virginia Tech’s Northern Virginia Center in Falls Church. Classes in the center started in fall 2020. Currently, the university has 376 computer science and computer engineering master’s degree students based in the Washington, D.C. area.

The Innovation Campus is part of Virginia’s Tech Talent Investment Program, which aims to produce 31,000 in-demand computer science and related graduates in the next two decades. At its full buildout, the Innovation Campus will produce about 500 master’s program graduates and 50 doctoral candidates annually.

“Our vision remains unchanged. We are building a community perfectly positioned to connect talented students with Northern Virginia’s growing tech ecosystem,” Lance Collins, vice president and executive director of the Innovation Campus, said in a statement.

The Innovation Campus is part of a developing area. Anchored by the campus, the Potomac Yard-VT station opened in May 2023. In December 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced that the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards are planning to move to Alexandria in a $2 billion deal that would create a 9 million-square-foot entertainment complex in Alexandria. In nearby Arlington County, Amazon.com’s $2.5 billion HQ2 began a phased opening in June 2023.

Va. Tech extends president’s contract through 2027

Metallica won’t be playing “Exit Sandman” anytime soon — Virginia Tech President Tim Sands will stay on as the university’s president though the 2027 academic year.

The university’s board of visitors voted unanimously to extend Sands’ contract during a quarterly meeting Tuesday, according to a news release.

Sands is Tech’s 16th president and has served in the role since 2014. Under his leadership, the university has begun construction on its $1 billion Innovation Campus in Alexandria, which in June announced a partnership with The Boeing Co. for a veterans center, following a $50 million pledge in May 2021 from the Fortune 500 defense contractor to foster diversity at the campus. The university has also seen a diversification of its student body: underrepresented minorities and Pell Grant-eligible, first-generation and veteran students now make up 40% of incoming classes.

“My commitment to Virginia Tech remains steadfast and I am deeply honored to continue to serve Virginia Tech and the commonwealth,” Sands said in a statement. “During my tenure here, our students and faculty have repeatedly demonstrated their commitment to improving the human condition. Their commitment has led to an increased demand for a Virginia Tech education and unprecedented support and engagement from our alumni and friends. This work is not complete, and I appreciate the opportunity afforded to me by the board to further engage our faculty, students, staff, alumni, partners and friends to build on our momentum as we advance the mission of Virginia Tech.”

Sands came to Virginia Tech from Purdue University, where he served as acting president, executive vice president and provost. Boeing’s record gift tied with the largest private donation the university has received; $50 million in 2019 from the Horace G. Fralin Charitable Trust and Heywood and Cynthia Fralin for the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. In November, Falls Church-based Fortune 500 contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. committed $12.5 million to support research in and teaching in quantum information science and engineering at the innovation campus.

Sands earned engineering and physics degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and chairs the Virginia Space Grant Consortium. He ranked No. 76 in a 2020 survey of the top-paid university presidents, earning $654,651 in 2019, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

“Tim Sands continues to be the thoughtful, strategic and visionary leader this university and the commonwealth needs,” Board of Visitors Rector Letitia “Tish” Long, a 1982 university graduate, said in a statement. “With a remarkable record of consensus building, partnerships, and success, Tim has proven his ability to align the university’s land-grant mission and our institutional commitment of Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) with emerging opportunities found in today’s rapidly changing world.”

The university needs to “continue to build on our progress, and Tim’s experience of meeting challenges, combined with his ability to build strong relationships and his understanding of our students’ needs and pressures, is needed now more than ever,” Long added. “We are committed to providing an affordable, accessible education for Virginians, and we are confident Tim will guide us to that goal.”

The board’s three-day meeting in Newport News was the first for new board members, including David Calhoun, a 1979 Tech graduate and CEO of The Boeing Corp., which announced its headquarters move to Arlington in May; Sandy Cupp Davis, of Blacksburg, who retired as the owner of BCR Real Estate and Property Management; and Charles “Brad” Hobbs, of Virginia Beach. A 1990 graduate, Hobbs is president and CEO of Hobbs & Associates, an HVAC contracting firm. Each will serve a four-year term.

 

Va. Tech Innovation Campus hires communications and marketing director

The Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria hired Franki Fitterer as the director of communications and marketing, the university announced Monday. Fitterer joined the campus’ team on Aug. 25.

Fitterer will direct marketing and communications strategy for the Innovation Campus and will focus on enrollment marketing and the campus’ brand strategy.

“We are thrilled to have Franki join the Innovation Campus,” Lance Collins, the vice president and executive director of the Innovation Campus, said in a statement. “She possesses not only an impressive range of experience in marketing and communications, but also a key understanding of how to build a new brand identity for our campus in a dynamic urban environment.”

Fitterer was the American University Washington College of Law’s director of public relations and marketing for 13 years. Along with overseeing brand implementation, marketing campaigns, media relations and other communications duties for admissions and development, she managed the communications and marketing for American University’s law school campus in the Tenleytown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., beginning with the promotion of the campus’ groundbreaking in 2013.

Before joining American University, Fitterer was the associate director for marketing and communications at California Western School of Law. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of San Francisco and a master’s degree in political science from American University’s School of Public Affairs.

GMU establishes President’s Innovation Advisory Council

George Mason University President Gregory Washington on Monday announced he has formed an advisory roundtable of nearly 30 regional business executives and community leaders to focus on the university’s innovation initiative.

The President’s Innovation Advisory Council will focus on issues such as GMU’s efforts to increase the pipeline of tech workers. George Mason’s innovation initiative includes $235 million in General Assembly funding to produce approximately 30% of the 25,000 undergraduate and graduate majors as part of the state’s Tech Talent Investment Program.

“These council members have been carefully selected for their knowledge and expertise, and also because they represent industries and organizations that are critical to the ecosystem we want to build,” Washington said in a statement. “We are bringing together community leaders that have a stake and an interest in helping us create an inclusive innovation economy.”

Former Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra, who served as the U.S. government’s first chief technology officer under the Obama administration, will chair the council. He is president of Arlington-based CareJourney, an open data membership service that offers a rating system for physicians, health care networks and medical facilities.

“We have a once-in-a generation opportunity to build an economy for our region that works better for everyone, anchored on technology, data and innovation,” Chopra said in a statement. “I’m eager to collaborate with regional stakeholders to build on George Mason’s impressive foundation to spark new products and companies that will employ more of our talented workforce.”

Oher advisory board members include:

  • Mahfuz Ahmed – CEO and chairman, Digital Intelligence Systems LLC (DISYS)
  • Anne Altman – co-founder, Everyone Matters Inc.
  • Sanam Boroumand – CEO, Main Digital
  • AC Chakrabarti – CEO, ByteMethod
  • Mike Corkery – president and CEO, Deltek
  • Francisco Durán – superintendent, Arlington Public Schools
  • Deepak Hathiramani – founding partner and executive chairman, SteeleHarbour Capital Partners
  • Victor Hoskins – president and CEO, Fairfax County Economic Development Authority
  • Ahmad Ishaq – founder and CEO, U.Group and managing director, Spectre Holdings
  • Nina Janopaul – president and CEO, Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing
  • Kurt John – chief cybersecurity officer, Siemens USA
  • Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia
  • Riz Khaliq – CEO, Assima
  • Paul Leslie – executive chairman, Dovel Technologies
  • John Loveland – global head of cyber security strategy and marketing, Verizon
  • John Maxwell – commissioner, Virginia Department of Veterans Services
  • Dolly Oberoi – co-founder and CEO, C2 Technologies Inc.
  • Jay O’Brien – executive vice president and chief banking officer, Sandy Spring Bank
  • Jon Peterson – CEO, Peterson Cos.
  • Kurt Scherer – managing partner, C5 Capital
  • Sumeet Shrivastava, president and CEO, Array Information Technology
  • Julius D. “JD” Spain Sr. – president, Arlington Branch NAACP
  • Telly Tucker – director, Arlington Economic Development
  • Vijay Venkateswaran — founder and CEO, Viventum Inc.
  • David Wiley – president, Widelity
  • Christina Winn – executive director, Prince William County Department of Economic Development
  • John Wood – CEO and chairman of the board, Telos Corp.

Last year, GMU began seeking companies to build its proposed $250 million Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA), set to open in September 2025 on its Arlington campus, part of its innovation initiative. 

Mason sought partners to build approximately 360,000 square feet of building space adjacent to its current campus in the Virginia Square neighborhood in Arlington. Mason announced in November 2018 the expansion of its Arlington campus as part of the state’s tech-talent pipeline initiative to grow computing programs and increase the number of graduates with skills being sought by Amazon.com Inc. and other tech employers in the state.

The IDIA campus will include labs, coworking and public programming spaces, ground-floor retail, a parking garage and a public plaza. When the university released the RFP in February, it was anticipated that 38,000 square feet would be needed for classrooms, 71,500 square feet for labs, 62,500 square feet for offices, 15,000 square feet for retail and 146,000 square feet for parking.

Mason’s Arlington campus is expected to occupy more than 1.2 million square feet about 3.5 miles northwest from the site of Amazon’s $2.5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters, which is currently under development in Arlington’s National Landing area.

“This distinguished leadership council, along with the Arlington innovation initiative, will help ensure that the region continues to attract, educate and shape the brightest minds in our industry and continue our rise as one of the hottest technology and entrepreneur ecosystems in the country,” Shrivastava said in a statement.

 

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Virginia Tech Innovation Campus director named to National Academy of Engineering

Virginia Tech announced Monday that Lance R. Collins, vice president and executive director of the university’s Innovation Campus, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for 2021.

The former Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at Cornell University was named as head of Tech’s Innovation Campus in February 2020. He had led Cornell’s college of engineering since 2010 and joined the university as a professor in 2002; he was part of the leadership team at Cornell that bid to partner with New York City to build Cornell Tech, which opened in 2017. 

He will be inducted in a ceremony on Oct. 3, bringing the organization’s membership to 2,355 people. Leidos Holdings Inc. Chairman and CEO Roger A. Krone will also be inducted in October.

“I am excited, humbled and honored by the opportunity to join leaders at the National Academy of Engineering,” Collins said in a statement. “I share this honor with the mentors, colleagues and students at Cornell who guided me and supported my research and ideas. It infuses me with energy as we move forward to build partnerships and create a new model of graduate education at the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus.”

Collins spent 11 years as an assistant professor, associate professor and professor of chemical engineering at Penn State University before his time at Cornell. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He has produced more than 100 publications from his research and has supervised 16 Ph.D. students during his career.

He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. All of his degrees are in chemical engineering. 

Construction on the Innovation Campus, located in Alexandria in close proximity to Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters, will take approximately 10 years to complete. It will enroll up to 750 master’s candidates and hundreds of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows.

 

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Tech Innovation Campus announces advisory board

Amid its inaugural virtual semester, the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria is already kickstarting its future tech talent production through the creation of an advisory board, for which top Virginia executives will provide guidance to the campus on business partnerships and projects. 

Top executives from Qualcomm, Boeing, KPMG, Northrop Grumman, The Carlyle Group and Hunch Analytics and other regional tech players will bring their expertise to the advisory board, making suggestions and facilitating regional partnerships with employers with a goal of closing the talent gap and making Virginia a tech hub.

“This distinguished and diverse group is united by a commitment to help us ​grow the ideas and talent required for economic growth and global leadership,” Virginia Tech President Sands said in a statement. “We are grateful for their service and we expect them to challenge us to set ambitious goals and push us to achieve them.”

The advisory board includes:

  • Sanju Bansal, founder and CEO, Hunch Analytics
  • Dave Calhoun, president and CEO, Boeing
  • Ted Colbert, executive vice president, Boeing
  • Joe DeSimone, executive chairman and co-founder, Carbon
  • Lynne Doughtie, former chairman and CEO, KPMG
  • Regina Dugan, CEO, Wellcome Leap
  • Steve Mollenkopf, CEO, Qualcomm
  • Russ Ramsey, board chair, Greater Washington Partnership
  • Kathy Warden, CEO, Northrop Grumman Corp.
  • Glenn Youngkin, co-CEO, The Carlyle Group 

The Innovation Campus, which was announced as part of Virginia’s successful bid to attract Amazon.com Inc.’s HQ2 to the region, is expected to produce 750 computer science graduates each year by the end of the decade and is anticipated to fill the tech supply gap in Virginia’s economy. Greater Washington Partnership Chair Russ Ramsey says that by 2025 it’s expected that there will be 60,000 more tech jobs than Virginia can supply, which is why the Innovation Campus is opening at just the right time.

“Now with COVID, the role of higher education is going to be even more important,” says Ramsey, who serves on the advisory board and also serves as chair of Capital CoLAB, an initiative promoting collaboration among the region’s universities and businesses. “Given the tremendous spotlight on digital skills and virtualization … throughout society … my goal … for Virginia Tech, coming within steps of Amazon HQ2, is to be able to beat this skills gap.” 

Lance Collins, who just completed his fifth week as vice president and executive director of Virginia Tech Innovation Campus, says that the Innovation Campus, as a graduate-level institution will work more closely with the business community as a whole than other college campuses.

“The Innovation Campus is different than a traditional academic campus in that it’s by design [intended to] be strongly integrated with companies, nonprofits and even potentially government agencies,” Collins says. “ It’s really got this strong engagement with the community. In order to build all of those linkages with those entities you really do need a strong group of people to help to think about what are the most important technology areas that are emerging.” Collins came to Tech from Cornell University, where he served as the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering for 10 years. 

One of those leaders is Sanju Bansal, founder and CEO of Hunch Analytics, who will serve as chair of the advisory board. He says his hope for the Innovation Campus will be to bring more tech jobs and innovations to the state.

“I would be thrilled for students … to come out, have ideas for companies and … start them here in Virginia … instead of going to Cambridge or Silicon Valley. It will be a seeding function,” Bansal says. “One of the ongoing frustrations is the fact that the labor pool in this area is quite talented … but we don’t have a very digital-ready workforce — that is, people who can build product that is world-scale. I always thought it would be nice to have more capacity indigenous to the region.”

Bringing talent and jobs back to Virginia is a win-win for the Innovation Campus, business partners and the advisory board, Collins says. 

“There’s a sense of excitement around really elevating technology in the Greater D.C. region and they’re excited about that prospect because they benefit from it,” he says. “It’s a virtuous cycle — if we succeed, they succeed.”

Innovation Campus classes are being conducted online this semester due to the pandemic. The Innovation Campus’ first academic building is on track to start construction next year and open in August 2024. In the meantime, faculty offices and course instructors will operate out of Tech’s current Falls Church satellite location. 

 

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Va. Tech selects architecture firm for first Innovation Campus building

Virginia Tech has selected Detroit-based architecture and planning firm SmithGroup to design the first academic building for its Innovation Campus in Alexandria, the university announced Friday.

SmithGroup responded to a public request for proposals (RFP) issued last summer by Tech after its June announcement that it would build its Innovation Campus in Alexandria. The RFP called for full design services for the first 300,000-square foot academic building. 

The firm also designed both Holden Hall and the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) II building on Tech’s Blacksburg campus. One of the lead designers for the building, Sven Shockey, vice president and corporate design director, is also a Virginia Tech alumnus.

The architecture and planning firm has also designed several other university buildings including the University of Pennsylvania’s Stephen A. Levin Neural & Behavioral Sciences Building and the University of Texas at Dallas’ Engineering and Computer Science West building. 

“We reviewed proposals from the ‘best of the best’ and SmithGroup stood out not just for their striking designs but also because of their understanding of what we strive to achieve and the culture we are trying to foster,” Brandy Salmon, managing director of the Innovation Campus, said in a statement.

The first Innovation Campus master’s degree students will enroll this fall. When the project is fully completed with the next 10 years, it will enroll 750 students, including master’s candidates, doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows.

“This first academic building will set the standard for our campus in Alexandria,” Liza Morris, assistant vice president for planning and university architect for Virginia Tech, said in a statement. “We are excited to work with a firm that embraces new technologies in the ways they have demonstrated, and designs spaces that foster collaboration and engagement through processes that are themselves collaborative and engaging, all in direct alignment with our vision.”

Virginia Tech Innovation Campus names Cornell dean as executive director

Lance R. Collins, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at Cornell University, has been selected as the first vice president and executive director of Virginia Tech’s $1 billion Innovation Campus, which is set to open in Alexandria’s North Potomac Yard area in the fall. He will join Virginia Tech as of Aug. 1.

The Innovation Campus is located in close proximity to Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters and was a key part of the state’s successful pitch for landing HQ2. The new campus, which is being built on the site of a Regal movie theater, is part of a statewide initiative to create more skilled workers with degrees in tech fields. Focus on tech talent, research and education, the Innovation Campus will serve graduate and postgraduate students. Its academic offerings will include a new master of engineering degree in computer science.

Collins has led Cornell’s college of engineering since 2010 and joined the university as a professor in 2002. He was part of the leadership team at Cornell that bid to partner with New York City to build Cornell Tech, which opened in 2017. While at Cornell, Collins raised $400 million in new gifts and secured $50 million gifts to name the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

“Lance Collins is a world-class leader with impeccable credentials, a commitment to collaboration and experience scaling up both an undergraduate student talent initiative and a new graduate campus in an urban area,” Sands said in a statement. “He’s the ideal person to build on our momentum and launch a campus in the greater Washington, D.C., area that will expand the pool of tech talent and lead our exploration of the human-computing frontier.”

Collins spent 11 years as an assistant professor, associate professor and professor of chemical engineering at Penn State University before his time at Cornell. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. All of his degrees are in chemical engineering. Collins will also serve as a professor of mechanical engineering at the Innovation Campus.

The Innovation Campus’s fall 2020 classes will meet in existing Virginia Tech academic space in Northern Virginia. The campus’ first building is scheduled to open in 2024. The entire Innovation Campus will take approximately 10 years to complete and will enroll up to 750 master’s candidates and hundreds of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows.