Focus

UVA leaders celebrated the announcement of Amazon's decision to locate a major headquarters function in Virginia as a significant opportunity to increase our contributions to the state and to collaborate with additional Virginia universities to create economic opportunity for all Virginians.

UVA, Albemarle County, and the City of Charlottesville pledged support for a program aimed at accelerating the growth of local startups. The proposed Catalyst Accelerator Program would provide a longer form of support for entrepreneurs seeking funding to advance their companies. UVA applied for a grant through GO Virginia, a state-funded initiative encouraging regional collaboration, to launch the program.

The UVA Center for Engineering in Medicine promotes innovation by embedding engineering students into clinical environments and nursing and medical trainees into engineering laboratories. Students work in multidisciplinary teams to acquire the necessary technical vocabulary, cultural literacy, and experience for careers in health care innovation.

NSF funding will allow UVA Engineering’s Link Lab to develop a new program that will train graduate students to make discoveries and then translate that knowledge into new technologies, products and services. The program will help train the next generation of scientific leaders to develop the skills necessary to tackle complex societal problems.

EdPolicyWorks, a joint collaboration between the Curry and Batten Schools, brings together researchers from across UVA and the state to focus on important questions of educational policy and implications for the workforce. Researchers presented their work in over 25 key presentations across this year's fall conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Women engineers at UVA host high school women each year to promote STEM and engineering as an accessible career path. UVA's Society of Women Engineers teaches women the basics of the field and empowers them to explore its possibilities, creating necessary expansion of the engineering and STEM pipelines in Virginia.

Professor Gregory B. Fairchild is the first director of Northern Virginia operations for the University of Virginia. He will oversee programs and facilities currently offered by Darden, the McIntire School of Commerce, and the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, among others. His appointment is indicative of UVA's growing presence in the Washington region.

The MITRE Corporation and UVA Engineering launched a Systems Engineering Fellowship for federal employees intended to help train the next generation of government technology leaders. The program is underway in McLean, VA and offers military and civilian government employees hands-on project and research experience at MITRE with an accelerated master's degree in systems engineering from UVA.

Darden's Executive MBA and Global Executive MBA programs will now operate primarily from a new state-of-the-art facility in the Rosslyn district of Arlington, VA. A marriage between distance learning and weekend residencies creates flexibility for working adults and deepens ties to the Northern Virginia area.

The Virginia College Advising Corps (VCAC) has expanded by a third with 36 advisers in 40 school districts. Partnership with GEAR UP Virginia, a U.S. Department of Education program, has created a unique growth opportunity that will provide resources and advising to more low-income, underrepresented, and first-generation students in Virginia as they consider their post-secondary education plans.

UVA Professor Ben Castleman is kickstarting a new, five-year strategic initiative to increase the number of students completing college and landing better-paying jobs in Virginia and beyond.

Multiple UVA-Wise graduates will join UVA's Virginia College Advising Corps to help high school students in Southwest Virginia explore all of their higher education options.