About Us

The Enterprise GIS Research and Development Administration Group was created under the aegis of "Strategic Partnership Initiatives" reporting to the Vice President for Information Technology at Virginia Tech. This is considered a strategic initiative of IT for serving the Virginia Tech research and administration, as well as a limited selection of external partners who are associated with the Commonwealth of Virginia and its localities. The group was formed in the Fall of 2008 as a means of addressing the need for storage and hosting of GIS data and for access and training for GIS tools and other resources. The intent is to create efficiencies of scale and significant cost savings to university departments by leveraging the latest technologies in data hosting and storage as well as the expertise of the IT professionals in the IT organization who manage the university's computing and networking functions on a daily basis.

The group is comprised of the following positions:

• Director, Strategic Partnership Initiatives
• Senior GIS Architect
• Web Designer/ Developer
• Operation Systems Analyst
• Geography Faculty
• Communications Manager
• Graduate Students
• Undergraduate Students

However, the entire IT organization of the university is represented in providing the various backend services (database management, security, operations support and networking) that allow the Enterprise GIS to operate.