190 / 204
@VT_Football
@HokiesFB HokiesFB
hokiesports
1 7 F O O T B A L L ME D I A G U I D E
Timothy D. Sands is the 16th president of Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University, joining the university in June of 2014. A
scientist, educator and inventor, he has dedicated much of his career
to advancing the impact of research and innovation in public education.
As president, he engaged the university community in a visionary plan to
advance Virginia Tech’s role as a global land grant institution, confronting
the Commonwealth’s, the country’s and the world’s most challenging
problems.
The initiative, called “BeyondBoundaries”, seeks to define Virginia Tech’s
role a generation into the future, and align the educational experience
with the needs and opportunities that will be created by changing world
economies and the evolving landscape of higher education.
In collaboration with the provost and academic leadership, he has
championed the development of signature Destination Areas, thematic
focus areas that leverage the university’s signature strengths to attract
talent and generate creative energy that extends across the disciplines.
The development of these areas involves reimagining Virginia Tech’s
Blacksburg residential campus, catalyzing the economic development
of the Blacksburg-Roanoke region with a growing health science and
technology center of excellence and developing the experiential learning
and research potential in the National Capital Region, He prioritizes
building new and enhancing existing partnerships and collaborations to
use resources and expertise in a focused and efficient way across the
country and the globe.
He also launched and led InclusiveVT, an initiative to provide leadership,
collaboration, guidance, and resources to support and accelerate the
implementation of inclusion and diversity goals throughout the university
community.
InclusiveVT supports the imperative of inclusion and diversity as key
components of a university ecosystem rich in opportunities for experiential
learning, cross-disciplinary engagement and the development of cultural
awareness and empathy.
President Sands’ vision for Virginia Tech embraces the university’s
heritage of service and community, and its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May
Serve). Virginia Tech students will graduate with disciplinary mastery,
technology literacy, cultural competency, resilience, empathy for others
and the passions and strengths needed for a life and career of impactful
service to humanity.
Before coming to Virginia Tech, President Sands served as executive
vice president for academic affairs and provost of Purdue University in
West Lafayette, Indiana. He was acting president during the summer
and fall of 2012, before Mitchell E. Daniels became the 12th president
of Purdue.
He earned a bachelor’s degree with highest honors in engineering
physics and a master’s degree and doctorate in materials science from
the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the Purdue faculty in 2002
as the Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering in the schools of materials
engineering and electrical and computer engineering. Prior to becoming
provost, he served as the Mary Jo and Robert L. Kirk Director of the Birck
Nanotechnology Center in Purdue’s Discovery Park.
From 1993 to 2002, President Sands was a professor of materials
science and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and
before that, he performed research and directed research groups at
Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) in Red Bank, New Jersey.
Throughout his career, he has participated in and led research teams and
academic programs that have been characterized by open collaboration
across a wide array of disciplines.
He has published more than 250 refereed papers and conference
proceedings and has been granted 20 patents in electronic and
optoelectronic materials and devices. His recent research efforts have
been directed toward the design and development of novel nanocomposite
materials for environmentally friendly and cost-effective solid-state
lighting, direct conversion of heat to electrical power and thermoelectric
refrigeration. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE), the Materials Research Society (MRS) and the National
Academy of Inventors (NAI). He was recently appointed to Governor
McAuliffe’s Council on Youth Entrepreneurship.
President Sands is joined at Virginia Tech by his wife, Dr. Laura Sands,
a professor of gerontology in the Department of Human Development at
Virginia Tech. All four of their children graduated from Purdue and are
proud members of the Virginia Tech community. Follow President Sands
on Twitter at @VTSandsman.
TIM SANDS
@VTSandsman
UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT