Integrity: We embrace integrity as a basis for the greater good in our actions and programs. We endeavor to maintain the highest standards of personal and professional behavior

Service: We are people-oriented, offering service as the foundation of an organizational culture that promotes and respects the dignity of every person. We embody the Virginia Tech motto: Ut Prosim, That I May Serve.

Forward Thinking We value the pursuit of cutting edge technology, welcoming ideas from many sources. Recognizing risk-taking as an invaluable asset, we foster intellectual inquiry, exploration, discovery and creativity that transcend traditional boundaries.

Spirit of Openness: We welcome broad perspective. Without prejudice, we invite all to partner in advanced technology exploration and transformation through intellectual prospecting and conscientious exploitation of resources.

Sustainability: We recognize implications of future societal challenges. As an institute of Virginia Tech, a land grant university, we seek opportunities for productive stewardship of resources.

Growing in spirals

After experiencing the inevitable moving-in hiccups, we feel more at home and settled in our new headquarters on the main campus. The pace of laboratory occupancy and research activity has picked up and the building is humming with intellectual excitement. Our students and faculty appear to enjoy the laboratory and office space -inviting and rich in the promise of large collaborative research. The building is proving to be an asset in the implementation of our philosophy of "Spiral Research" briefly described below.

An educational psychologist, Jerome Bruner proposed the spiral curriculum concept in his classic text The Process of Education. He advocated that a curriculum should revisit its basic ideas repeatedly as it develops, building upon them until the student has grasped the full formal apparatus associated with these concepts. We have adapted this concept to our work with a belief that by strategically revisiting our investments over a period of time, we can grow our interdisciplinary research not in a straight line but in an upward spiral instead. This is depicted pictorially in Figure 1.

The first step in our research growth strategy is to provide seed monies through our yearly RFP (Request for Proposal) in which proposals are sought for investment and growth in the selected areas of interdisciplinary research aligned with our mission. The research conducted with the seed monies provides the preliminary data/proof of hypothesis and constitutes the first arm of the spiral.

Building on the preliminary data/research, the faculty are generally able to secure funds from external agencies (NIH, NSF etc), allowing them to expand their research to the next arm of the spiral: larger in scope and richer in content than the base arm. This process plays itself in one or more of our seed projects.

At this point in the upward spiral journey, ICTAS steps in to assess the possibility of bringing these faculty together under the umbrella of an ICTAS center, typically comprising of an interdisciplinary roster of twelve or more faculty members engaged in a multi-faceted research thrust with a significant potential for scholarship and large external funds. To ensure the sustainable growth of these centers, ICTAS commits an investment on the order of $75,000/year, on an on-going basis, with the expectation that the center will become eminent in its field and expand its research expenditures by a factor of two in five years. Our recently constituted centers- ICTAS Center for the Physics and Engineering of the Cell, ICTAS Center of Excellence in Sustainable Water Infrastructure (ICE SWIM) and ICTAS Center for Bio-Imaging are examples of the execution of this philosophy.

We are genuinely proud of the accomplishments of our faculty and students and share their excitement of discovery and learning. As we spiral upward in enhancing the research capacity and reputation of Virginia Tech in cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, we invite you to join us in this upward momentum.