UVA Engineering

At the University of Virginia School of Engineering & Applied Science, we create knowledge, technologies and leaders for an advanced society. We are deploying a new model of research comprised of interdisciplinary teams of faculty who focus their efforts in areas of emerging societal need. UVA’s highly collaborative culture across its multiple, world-class schools of engineering, medicine, business, law, public policy and arts and sciences is allowing UVA Engineering to make an impact in cross-disciplinary initiatives. Some of the powerful recent initiatives include:

• Multifunctional Materials Integration, an interdisciplinary initiative involving a team of more than 40 researchers from UVA Engineering, the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the School of Medicine. Multifunctional Materials Integration focuses on a critical need to reduce, reuse and recycle heat and energy and create new functionalities in many technologies that form the backbone of modern society. The researchers will collaborate on developing new, advanced and complex materials and devices that – from their atoms all the way to their finished products, and systems of products – have a built-in level of energy efficiency and functionality that does not exist today.

• A cross-disciplinary effort to end childhood diabetes, involving the School of Medicine, the School of Engineering, the Data Science Institute and the UVA-based Center for Diabetes Technology. The effort will allow researchers to focus on finding a cure for the disease. Team members have identified common genetic variants that predispose individuals to the disease, and they have invented an artificial pancreas that helps patients control and manage it. This initiative begins with genetic screening and early detection, uses the artificial pancreas to optimally control the disease, and aspires to a cure.

• A collaborative research effort through the UVA Center for Advanced Biomanufacturing involving biomedical engineers, chemical engineers and physicians to develop novel and more effective tissue engineering and regenerative medicine technologies. This includes innovative regenerative materials for use in advanced biomanufacturing, rapid proto-typing platforms amenable to scale-up, and integration and patterning for construction of hierarchical tissue systems. UVA has partnered with a national public-private consortium called the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute with the goal of developing technologies for large-scale manufacturing of human tissues and organs.

• Two initiatives related to expanding and securing society’s cyber capabilities. UVA Engineering’s new Link Lab for cyber-physical systems research builds upon the University’s pioneering work in areas such as body sensors, smart buildings, wireless health, bio-inspired platforms and intelligent transportation systems. UVA’s BP America Professor of Computer Science John Stankovic was among the first in the nation to identify cyber-physical systems as an emerging field. UVA Engineering also is focusing new resources and faculty in cybersecurity, building upon nationally recognized work in cybersecurity for first-responder vehicles and unmanned vehicles, as well as automated cybersecurity for large systems such as in U.S. defense.