Bold. Creative. Ambitious.
VCU research flourishes by changing the game. We are highly creative and passionate about our community, with a great breadth of knowledge. This makes us nimble, responsive to change, and focused on the future: a future shaped by transformative innovation. The foundation of our strength is our collaborative community of difference-makers with diverse experiences. We conduct research that addresses societal grand challenges and tackles them with energized, engaged teams who seek to lead change in our community, our region, and across the globe. We deliver bold and practical solutions with global implications - that's what makes us unique.
Built for breakthroughs
We draw on the knowledge of multiple disciplines,
each informing the others,
each building on the expertise of the others,
to create a whole that’s truly
more powerful
than the sum of its parts.
Transforming innovation through a culture of collaboration
On July 1, 2021, VCU entered the first two-year phase of a university-wide, six-year One VCU Research Strategic Priorities Plan, making an initial investment to advance public impact research priorities and expand our infrastructure. VCU is uniquely positioned to make transdisciplinary breakthroughs by engaging with our surrounding innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem, leading to profound impacts that reverberate across the region, state, nation and globe.
VCU invests in novel, collaborative, imaginative and inventive approaches under each of the five strategic initiatives:
Enriching the human experience
Focus on innovation and ways to inform policy change through transdisciplinary knowledge creation, applications in technology and innovations in creative practice.
Achieving a just and equitable society
Develop a national model for transforming DEI research and scholarship into measurable, societally relevant outcomes.
Optimizing health
Harness our strengths in basic research, personalized medicine, public health and innovations in medicine to address health disparities that lead to optimized health for all.
Supporting sustainable energy and environments
Bring about the convergence of technological innovation and sustainability to solve society’s critical energy and environmental problems.
Culture of collaboration
A foundation of bringing societal impact through a culture of collaboration transcends all other themes of our strategic plan. Collaborative projects drive innovation and discoveries that improve our community, our society and our world. We commit to improving the human condition through a culture of creativity, team science, collaborative research and recognition at VCU. This plan is for everyone in the university who is or could be involved with research, scholarship and creative practice.
