About The Centrifuge

What is The Centrifuge?

Higher education is in transition. Universities face shifting public expectations, evolving missions, and disruptive technologies. These pressures call for new ways of thinking, working, teaching, and learning.

In response, the Futures Initiative Working Group – a coalition of faculty, staff, and students – has been exploring how to shape a future where:

• UVA solves problems both with and for the public
• Innovation cycles move quickly, translating ideas into impact in months rather than years
• Technology expands access to learning
• Strategic partnerships keep UVA at the forefront of discovery 

The result is The Centrifuge: 

a dynamic initiative designed to accelerate UVA’s excellence outward
into communities, into solutions, and into the future 
through multidisciplinary, community-driven, impact-focused work

Mission and Method

The Centrifuge reimagines how higher education creates change – bridging insight and impact, accelerating the path from idea to implementation. 

What We Do

We begin with the challenges communities face and build toward solutions. By listening to those closest to complex issues, we identify where focused effort matters most. Our teams pursue concrete, achievable outcomes with clear timelines – moving beyond research for its own sake toward work that creates real-world change. We develop technologies, launch services, build products, and support ventures that put knowledge to work where it's needed most. 

How We Do It 

Decision-making is a shared responsibility among public agencies, private partners, philanthropic organizations, and university stakeholders who together shape our direction and select projects. We draw talent from wherever expertise and insight exist – researchers, practitioners, entrepreneurs, community organizers, creatives, and professionals whose experience is essential to solving complex problems. We compress traditional timelines through rapid innovation cycles that move quickly from concept to prototype to product, building engagement opportunities directly into our process so stakeholders can contribute, challenge, and refine solutions as they emerge.

What’s Next

The Centrifuge now launches its proof-of-concept phase through Futures Grants, which support early-stage, high-potential project teams, and Spinning Up the Future, a signature event where grant finalists pitch projects and explore next steps with partners.