These centers engage faculty and students from across the university in knowledge creation and innovation. The centers have a direct impact on vital areas of energy, infrastructure, manufacturing and national defense. Each center must meet the requirements set by the West Virginia University Research Office.
WVU Research Centers
Center for Integration in Gas Research and Utilization (CIGRU)
This center conducts research in gas, oil and chemical fields. Our research encompasses catalysis, reaction engineering, material science, power generation and gas turbines. The center studies direct shale gas conversion to chemicals polymers and single cell protein. CIGRU works with industry and government on comparative energy, environmental law and policy.
Director: Dr. John Hu
Statler College Research Centers
To be considered an official Statler College Research Center, each center must meet the requirements set by the Statler College Research Office.
NSF Center for Integration of Composites into Infrastructure
This center studies and remedies deterioration of our nation's facilities such as public buildings, highways and bridges, water and sewage treatment facilities, airports and mass transit systems. Recent studies indicate that it could cost trillions of dollars to bring all of our constructed facilities to safe and efficient operating levels. It uses composites, resin, engineered wood and fiber to build and renovate structures. The Center is part of NSF IUCRC Program and it works with WVDOT, PennDOT, USDOT-FHWA, U.S. Army and Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Department of Energy and Department of Defense.
Director: Dr. Hota V. GangaRao
Industrial Assessment Center (IAC)
Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the IAC provides free energy assessments to small and mid-sized manufacturers within three hours of Morgantown. The WVU-IAC assesses manufacturing facilities, water treatment and wastewater treatment sites to save energy, reduce waste and improve productivity. The IAC evaluates cyber security saved companies about $700 million every year through efficiency and productivity improvements.
Director: Dr. Bhaskaran Gopalakrishnan
NSF Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR)
This Center advances human identification capabilities used by variety of industry and government agencies such as Aware Inc, Canada Border Services. Dept. of Defense and Dept. of Homeland Security, FBI, MorphoTrak and Northrop Grumman. WVU is the Center’s founding I-UCRC (Industry- University Cooperative Research Center) site focusing on biometrics and related identification technology and systems. These biometric systems identify individuals by fingerprints, hand geometry, face, voice, lip movement, gait, and iris patterns. The WVU site provides biomolecular analysis such as rapid DNA, cloud computing, and video analytics. The WVU site looks at four technical areas related to CITeR's technical area of Identity: (1) Biomolecular biometrics, (2) Cross-modal and cross-spectral matching, (3) Mobile and cloud biometrics, and (4) Video analytics.
WVU Affiliate Director: Dr. Matthew C Valenti
Shared Research Facilities (SRF)
These are high end instrumentation and facilities such as Cleanroom, Electron Microscopy, Material Characterization and Bio-Nano facilities. These facilities are located in downtown Morgantown and Evansdale campus and can be rented by departments, other academic institutions, government labs or the private sector. The SRF staff train, guide, and assist faculty in operating the instruments. WVU tenured and tenured track faculty can use the Deans InSPIRE program to get free time on SRF instruments for gathering preliminary data and satisfy reviewer comments.