UVA professor Bryan Berger continues the fall U Ask, UVA Answers series, speaking at the downtown Jefferson-Madison Regional Library on October 11 and the Crozet Library on October 21. Berger will discuss PFAS forever chemicals and biotechnology innovations improving food safety and quality, plus how science can reduce environmental health risks.
UVA computer scientist Chen Chen has earned a five-year, $600,000 NSF CAREER Award to build next-generation AI tools for epidemic intelligence. Combining case reports, wastewater data and mobility patterns, her research aims to improve disease forecasting, guide public health interventions, strengthen surveillance strategies, and eventually help communities understand local infection risks.
Four University of Virginia School of Engineering faculty have received prestigious NSF CAREER Awards for research tackling major societal challenges through AI. Jason Bates, Chen Chen, Yu Meng, and Tianhao Wang are exploring nitrate conversion, disease forecasting, learning from imperfect data, and privacy-protecting synthetic datasets, respectively, each backed by roughly five-year, $600,000-plus grants.
UVA’s Center for Applied Biomechanics researches how the human body sustains injury—and how to prevent it—in both car crashes and combat. Jason Forman leads automotive safety work with NHTSA, while Robert Salzar develops military protective equipment, including the Warrior Injury Assessment Manikin, born from studying blast injuries in MRAP vehicles.
UVA materials science professors, led by Liqin Ke with co-investigators Jerry Floro and Lin Zhou, have received a $3 million ARPA-E award to discover new rare-earth permanent magnets. Part of the MAGNITO program, the multidisciplinary project combines computation, AI, and advanced characterization to find breakthrough materials strengthening U.S. manufacturing and critical-mineral supply chains.
Two University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty members, Scott Acton and Michael L. King, have been elected to the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine. They will be inducted during the academy’s October summit, which focuses on advancing innovation, access, affordability and trust in health care.
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Three University of Virginia computer science professors, Matthew Dwyer, Sebastian Elbaum and Mary Lou Soffa, have been named among the 80 inaugural members of the Software Engineering Academy, a new honor society from ACM SIGSOFT recognizing profound, lasting contributions to software engineering research, practice and education worldwide.
Ferdinando Fioretto, a UVA Engineering computer science professor and researcher, will lead a project as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission.
UVA has launched 15 inaugural Research Hubs, chosen from ninety proposals, spanning fields like hypersonic technologies, quantum photonics, aging, health policy, AI, and supply chains. Open to faculty across career stages and schools, these hubs foster cross-disciplinary collaboration, generating scholarship and partnerships that strengthen UVA’s competitiveness for major research funding opportunities.
UVA’s Office of the Vice President for Research hosted four symposia this year spanning clinical AI, quantum computing, robotics, and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, uniting researchers, clinicians, students, and community members. From cutting-edge technology to underdiagnosed conditions, these gatherings show how convening the right people around pressing questions can shape entire fields of discovery.
UVA researcher Majid Shafiee-Jood and his team are partnering with Wise County, Virginia decision makers to strengthen flood preparedness after Hurricane Helene’s devastation. By blending advanced predictive models with residents’ firsthand experiences, the initiative aims to help rural southwest Virginia communities better anticipate and withstand future floods and natural disasters.
UVA associate professor of electrical and computer engineering Homa Alemzadeh was awarded the DSN 2026 Test-of-Time Award at the 56th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, in Charlotte, North Carolina, in June.