What if universities tackled society’s biggest challenges not just for the public, but with the public?
This question sits at the heart of University of Virginia’s emerging initiative, The Centrifuge—a bold experiment designed to rethink how research institutions create real-world impact. Developed through the university’s University of Virginia Futures Initiative, The Centrifuge shifts agency to the people closest to complex challenges and invites communities, industry partners, and civic leaders to co-design solutions alongside academic researchers.
Rather than beginning with academic disciplines or traditional research agendas, The Centrifuge starts with locally defined priorities and builds multidisciplinary teams around them. The goal: innovation that is not only groundbreaking but also grounded—sustained by collaboration between universities, communities, and industry.
In its inaugural year, The Centrifuge is launching Futures Grants, investing in bold, early-stage ideas addressing urgent issues such as AI integration, sustainable living, and educational equity. While these projects vary widely in focus, they share a common approach: solution-oriented, community-driven, and cross-sector by design.
This session brings together the judges who will have selected the inaugural Futures Grant cohort just one week before the Tom Tom Festival. Representing civic, academic, and industry perspectives, these leaders will reflect on what they learned from evaluating proposals built around community partnership and collaborative innovation.
Together, they will explore:
• What it takes to elevate public partners as true co-designers of innovation
• How to navigate competing priorities across academia, industry, and civic institutions
• What meaningful, measurable impact looks like beyond university walls
The session will conclude with an interactive exercise inviting participants to help shape priorities for the next Futures Grant cycle—demonstrating how courageous innovation emerges when communities and institutions build solutions together.
More about Futures Grants: https://datascience.virginia.edu/centrifuge-futures-grants
More about The Centrifuge: https://datascience.virginia.edu/centrifuge-about
More about UVA’s Futures Initiative: https://futures-initiative.provost.virginia.edu/
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Note: This Summit session is ticketed.
Please purchase your
tickets on Humanitix. You will then receive an email from Sched with login information that allows you to make your personal schedule.
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A special thank you to our sponsors: The 14th Annual Tom Tom Festival is presented with the University of Virginia, Virginia Tourism, R.L. Beyer Custom Homes, Ludwig Kuttner, and The City of Charlottesville
