Co-Curricular Site Visits
Co-curricular site visits are designed to enhance the academic components and provide opportunities for students to engage directly with a wide range of research institutes, businesses, and other facilities and industries in the region, as well as to experience the American culture more fully and intentionally. All students will be required to participate.
The Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership (MAAP) is part of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS). It is an FAA-designated test site for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Since its founding in 2013, MAAP has focused on progressively overcoming obstacles to move the UAS industry forward at an accelerated pace. MAAP does this by:
-Connecting industry challenges with solutions driven by world-class research. MAAP’s expert staff has decades of combined experience in manned and unmanned aircraft, and innovate every day to solve operational challenges.
-Working closely with regulating authorities and industry partners on groundbreaking studies that inform evidence-based policies and standards. As the bridge between the regulator and industry partners, MAAP helps both sides work together collaboratively to develop safety cases and certification bases that set new precedents and lay the groundwork for expanded operations.
-MAAP’s active involvement in the development of industry standards allows them to share lessons learned and promote best practices across multiple standards bodies.
-Enabling operations with tomorrow’s technology today. To implement next-generation technology safely, you need to combine operational expertise and innovative thinking in a secure environment that facilitates efficient prototyping. MAAP brings all of these components together to provide value for its customers, taking them from today’s reality to tomorrow’s possibilities more quickly.
The Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT), is university-level research institute positioned at the nexus of arts, design, engineering, and science. Uniquely partnered with the Moss Arts Center, ICAT is more than just a “media lab,” ICAT is a transdisciplinary living lab that is tightly integrated with educational, commercial, and arts communities.
Nestled in the heart of Virginia’s Technology Corridor and adjacent to the Virginia Tech (VT) campus, the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center (VTCRC) is home to over 180 research, technology and support companies. Our 230-acre park is located in a beautiful mountain setting, with easy access to the metropolitan areas of northern Virginia and the nation’s capital. In collaboration with VT, VTCRC advances the research, educational, and technology transfer missions of the university. The VTCRC advances the research mission by helping to create research relationships between companies at the VTCRC and VT (e.g., a tenant company could sponsor research at VT as part of a SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) contract).
The VTCRC advances the educational mission by working with faculty to identify student projects that can be done at the VTCRC (e.g., MBA students create business plans for VTCRC companies). And the VTCRC advances the technology transfer mission by having a program called VT KnowledgeWorks that helps to create companies based on VT-developed technology licensed by Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, Inc.
Part of the Pamplin College of Business, the Apex Center for Entrepreneurs inspires and empowers students to turn their passion, purpose, and ideas into action.
The Apex Center for Entrepreneurs is named in recognition of a joint commitment of $5 million by four Virginia Tech alumni, Brian Callaghan, Ted Hanson, Edwin “Win” Sheridan, and Jeffrey Veatch. CIE’s namesake, Apex Systems, is the information technology staffing and services company that Callaghan, Sheridan, and Veatch founded in 1995, which Hanson joined as chief financial officer in 1998.