Data Centers
With Virginia Tech, tomorrow’s data center ecosystem takes shape
The Need for System-Level Innovation
As advanced computing scales across the United States, so will the demand for reliable power. Supporting this surge in data center workloads – projected to quadruple by 2030 – will require better efficiency, aligned policies, and skilled data engineers.
By 2030, data center workloads are projected to quadruple, necessitating new structures, policies, and workforces. To ensure that this expansion proceeds with resilience, care, and forward thinking, now is the time for collaboration.
To facilitate this expansion, now is the time to connect stakeholders from across the data center ecosystem. Together, we can target problems too complex for one company or side of the industry to tackle alone, and ensure that the benefits of digital infrastructure growth are shared broadly across communities, industries, and regions.
Data center summit explores the complexities in powering the digital ecosystem
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Collaboration as Competitive Edge
Virginia Tech is stepping in to help answer mission-critical questions surrounding the booming digital economy. Positioned as a bridge between research and deployment, we’re working on solutions for both the utilities supplying power and the operators managing compute demand as they model long-term scenarios at scale. Our recent Data Center Summit brought together leaders from industry, academia, and government to begin shaping the data center ecosystem of the future.
Integrating Every Side of Innovation
The Build
How data centers get designed, built, and deployed
Modern data centers require infrastructure that can evolve with and react to fluctuating workloads, but such complexity can stress choices like location and construction models. When efficiency and economics don’t immediately align, it takes system-level coordination to create enabling environments for high performance. To advance a better built environment, we’re bringing together owners, builders, and technology providers to accelerate delivery while leveraging digital tools, automation, and modular approaches to construction.
The Power
Developing a reliable energy mix at scale
Data centers must be reliable — and so must their power source. We’re developing better tools to coordinate data centers both on and off the grid, while also tackling grid capacity and interconnection challenges, important advances across our ever-more electrified society. And as nuclear energy re-emerges as a potential solution for dependable, on-site, low-carbon baseload power, Virginia Tech and partner SURA will guide Jefferson Lab in Newport News, one of the nation’s leading nuclear physics research laboratories.
The Resources
Maximizing efficiency to minimize our footprint
Companies need practical solutions to reduce energy and water consumption across data center operations. At Virginia Tech, we’re exploring how energy-efficient AI chips, different cooling measures, better algorithms, and even artificial intelligence itself can optimize performance responsibly. And by aligning utilities, industry, and government in prioritizing low-impact industrial processes at scale, we can help communities manage vital resources now and in the future.
The Compute
Maximizing efficiency to minimize our footprint
Companies need practical solutions to reduce energy and water consumption across data center operations. At Virginia Tech, we’re exploring how energy-efficient AI chips, different cooling measures, better algorithms, and even artificial intelligence itself can optimize performance responsibly. And by aligning utilities, industry, and government in prioritizing low-impact industrial processes at scale, we can help communities manage vital resources now and in the future.
The Talent
Maximizing efficiency to minimize our footprint
Companies need practical solutions to reduce energy and water consumption across data center operations. At Virginia Tech, we’re exploring how energy-efficient AI chips, different cooling measures, better algorithms, and even artificial intelligence itself can optimize performance responsibly. And by aligning utilities, industry, and government in prioritizing low-impact industrial processes at scale, we can help communities manage vital resources now and in the future.
Imagine the
possibilities
with Virginia Tech
- Test and prove new technologies faster through living labs
- Turn permitting and policy from a barrier into a shared solution
- Stay ahead of threats with built-in, forward-looking security and resilience strategies
- Lower operating costs and improve performance by optimizing energy, cooling, and resource use from the start
- Access a ready pipeline of skilled talent trained on real-world data center challenges
- Reduce build time, cost overruns, and risk with smarter, more repeatable construction and deployment models
See more angles we’re exploring
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Reducing power consumption, protecting data through algorithms , articleUsing better algorithms, Gretchen Matthews and her colleagues are focused on reducing energy load and protecting data centers from catastrophic loss.
Date: 05/06/2026 - -
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Power supply or grid stress? Both need to be solved to meet data center demand , articleSmall modular reactors, or on-site power plants, could allow data center companies to supply their own power right where it’s needed, without impacting residential and commercial energy delivery and putting extra strain on the grid.
Date: 05/04/2026 - -
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There's a power/water trade-off in data center resource allocation , articleLandon Marston, who studies sustainable water resources management, is in the middle of the growing challenge of power and water resource allocation for data centers.
Date: 05/04/2026 -
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Gwen Harrington
Director of Strategic Engagement
You’re changing the world. So are we.
Let’s do it together.
As data demands accelerate, innovation in power, design, construction, and computing is increasingly critical to improving efficiency, sustainability, and global competitiveness at scale.
With Virginia Tech, you can help shape the future of data center infrastructure while leveraging the strengths of a tier 1 research university dedicated to service.