One of our most popular Facebook posts to date: It’s official: the new Virginia Tech drone park is open! It’s the largest in the nation, and students from all disciplines are encouraged to use it. Posted by Virginia Tech College of Engineering on Thursday, April 26, 2018
Facebook Live: Inside FutureHAUS at Virginia Tech
Welcome to the Virginia Tech FutureHAUS Dubai, an innovative, interdisciplinary, and ambitious project to design and build a futuristic, modular smart home. Students and faculty from the Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies and College of Engineering have been working nearly two years on the planning, design, and building of the home in anticipation of an international …
Engineering students take lifesaving concept to market with help from university environment and donors
A little seed money and a lot of advice goes a long way for a budding entrepreneur. Take it from the two Hokie engineering student founders of Park & Diamond, a young startup that makes collapsible, sleek bike helmets. After winning seven pitch competitions last year, many held by the Apex Center for Entrepreneurs, the company took off in a major way, earning …
Despite bumps in the road, engineering team places third in North American autonomous vehicle competition
After a journey that involved a crash, a dead battery, and late-night coding sprints, a Virginia Tech engineering team took home a third place finish in the first year of an autonomous vehicle competition held by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and General Motors. Student-led Victor Tango AutoDrive was the sole team — out of eight total collegiate design teams …
Hyperloop at Virginia Tech detools a fiberglass layup
Hyperloop detools a heavy fiberglass layup To get ready for SpaceX’s Hyperloop pod competition this summer, Hyperloop at Virginia Tech is doing some heavy lifting — literally. Posted by Virginia Tech College of Engineering on Wednesday, April 25, 2018
One engineering alumnus’ 36-year giving streak helps transform a university department — and an industry
Bryan Smith stands at the edge of the high ground at mining company Luck Stone’s flagship location just outside Richmond, Virginia. He’s looking out at a massive quarry — one that’s about 37 stories deep and more than a half-mile wide. “So this is our Boscobel Plant. It was begun about 1879,” Smith begins, sweeping his arm across the panoramic …
From structural engineering to software, this Hokie’s career success compels his giving
The very building in which Bruce Bates’ structural engineering software company was located was designed — entirely by chance — by the same software the company created. That’s an example of the ubiquitousness of software by RISA technologies, which was founded, owned, and operated by Bates, an alumnus of Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering. “We’ve been in this building since …
How one engineering alumna keeps the door open for future Hokies
Every year in the small agricultural town of Walkersville, Maryland, the high school’s graduating class writes their post-graduation plans next to their name on a wall. Susan Kolbay, who’d lived in Walkersville all her life, took a pen to the wall and filled in “Virginia Tech.” In 1997, she packed up and headed to a town with a population about …
Mapping the ocean floor leads Virginia Tech team to earn a slot in $7 million international competition
Nineteen teams went in and only nine — including Virginia Tech’s own DEEP-X — came out of the first round of a global competition to build autonomous vehicles that can rapidly map the mostly unknown ocean floor. The DEEP-X team, led by Dan Stilwell, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Virginia Tech Center for Marine Autonomy and Robotics, has earned …
New Virginia Tech professor first to fully track behavior of carbon compound in air, changing future air research
By being the first to fully track the changing chemistry of carbon molecules in the air, a Virginia Tech professor could change the way we study pollutants, smog, and emissions to the atmosphere. Gabriel Isaacman-VanWertz, lead scientist on a new study published in Nature Chemistry and assistant professor in the Charles Edward Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has established …