Research Centers and Focus Areas

Each year, more than 1.5 million people are diagnosed with cancer in the U.S., and some 600,000 die of it. At Virginia Tech and the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, more than 30 research teams are at work to combat the disease.

Glial cells are the brain's most abundant cell type. At the Center for Glial Biology in Health, Disease, and Cancer, scientists investigate the mechanisms underlying glial cell function in health, normal brain development, and disease, including brain tumors.

The Center for Heart and Reparative Medicine Research at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute serves as a nexus for research teams exploring basic research questions about the heart.

Research in the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute's Center for Human Neuroscience Research covers a range of fields, including neuroscience, magnetometry, computational psychiatry, psychology, political science, and economics.

The most complex of all organ systems, the brain is composed of hundreds of billions of neural cells that are interconnected and work in concert to produce an array of human behaviors.

The Center for Transformative Research on Health Behaviors (CTRHB) conducts transformative health behaviors research with the primary objectives of prevention and treatment of life-style related diseases.

This NIH-funded center is one of six national centers within the Medical Rehabilitation Resource Network. The center helps clinical scientists studying pediatric rehabilitation by funding pilot studies, providing mentorship, and offering training and tools to support clinical trials research.

The Neuromotor Research Clinic has pioneered the use of high-intensity therapeutic interventions. These treatments have allowed children with weakness on one side of their bodies - a hallmark of a form of cerebral palsy called hemiparesis - to make large, rapid, and enduring gains in mobility and everyday neuromotor skills.