Collins, Lance | Virginia Tech Innovation Campus

Lance R. Collins in 2020 was named the inaugural vice president and executive director of the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus. Prior to that he was dean of engineering at Cornell. In 2011, he was part of the team that successfully bid to partner with New York City to build Cornell Tech. As dean, Collins accelerated the college’s diversity efforts, overseeing the increase in underrepresented minority students from 8 to 19 percent, and undergraduate women from 33 to 50 percent. Collins’ research uses simulation to study turbulent processes. In 2021 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.