For the fiscal year from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, WVU Foundation data shows 20,206 donors – including 9,360 alumni – made 39,347 gifts totaling $213.8 million. This total is second only to $270.1 million donated in fiscal year 2021. The gifts will benefit education, health care and prosperity to make a positive impact across the Mountain State and beyond for years to come.
The return of FallFest highlights a packed Welcome Week at West Virginia University which begins Thursday, Aug. 11, and continues through the start of the fall semester Wednesday, Aug. 17. New events include a pool party for all students at the Student Rec Center Aug. 13 and a service project to benefit the West Virginia United Way Collaborative during Monday Night Lights for first-year students Aug. 15.
West Virginia University’s FirstGen Initiatives are being awarded the First-gen Forward designation. The designation comes from the Center for First-Generation Student Success. With this designation, WVU has access to additional professional development opportunities, community-building experiences, research and resources to bolster WVU’s first-gen programming.
West Virginia University is sharing updated COVID-19 health and safety guidance as campuses across the WVU System prepare for the start of the 2022-23 academic year and the first day of fall semester classes Aug. 17.
A team from West Virginia University and the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium are taking the first steps toward opening the West Virginia Small Satellite Center of Excellence. The SmallSat Center will work with businesses and other organizations to develop West Virginia’s second small satellite and to help those partners offer services and products to clients who want to fly experiments out to low orbit.
A summer program at West Virginia University is providing research opportunities in neuroscience for undergraduate students from underrepresented and global communities, including Ukraine. By training undergraduate students who are interested in continuing their education and conducting state-of-the-art research, the program aims to meet the growing need for neuroscience graduate-level students with research experience.
Through a 21-month, $300,000 project with funding from the Small Business Innovation Research of the U.S. Air Force Laboratory and in partnership with Kinnami Software Corporation, engineers in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources are making it possible for combat search and rescue operations to pinpoint isolated personnel without using radio GPS that can be intercepted.
After years of use, mattresses and the materials that form them are eventually discarded into landfills creating methane gases while their chemicals and dyes seep into soil and groundwater. West Virginia University researchers are working on ways to recycle used mattress textiles to help create biodegradable products as replacements for single-use plastics.
With help from new Department of Energy grant funding, Xingbo Liu, a West Virginia University engineer, will work to develop new, cutting-edge coatings for the blades of turbines used in large-scale power generation. These protective layers will be able to withstand the extreme heat and corrosion of hydrogen combustion but work with the principles and technologies of existing natural gas turbines, primarily in power plants.
With a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the University is launching an immersive, interdisciplinary program that centers on WVU’s Inhalation Facility. The 40 doctoral students who participate will use the Facility, one of only a few like it in the country, to analyze the toxicity of air samples they’ve collected in the field and investigate how air pollution affects entire systems of the body, rather than just single cells.