Education 2025: SANDS, TIMOTHY

Sands became the land-grant university’s 16th president in 2014 after serving as interim president at Purdue University, and is under contract to stay through 2027.

He has led the development of Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus, a $1 billion campus in Alexandria for graduate computer science and engineering programs. The campus’s first academic building, costing $302 million, opened for classes in January.

Virginia Tech has received notable donations in recent years, including $50 million from Fortune 500 defense contractor Boeing and two $50 million gifts for the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke. In fiscal 2024, its federal research spending exceeded $308 million, Sands said

in February, but in May, the university reported 57 grants worth $57.9 million were terminated.

Sands previously was executive vice president for academic affairs and provost of Purdue University. Trained as a scientist whose research focused on light-emitting diodes, he holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

Sands is currently in the middle of his two-year term as chair of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors, which maintains oversight over the division’s finances, litigation and infractions process.

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