Lance Collins
- Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Lance Collins is Virginia Tech’s vice president of the greater Washington, D.C. area, overseeing academic programming, partnerships, personnel, and building operations in the region.
Since his appointment in 2020 as vice president and executive director of Virginia Tech’s Alexandria campus that launched with the opening of Academic Building One, Collins has overseen the hiring of faculty and staff, development of research areas, implementation of a novel project-based curriculum, and growth of enrollment in the Master of Engineering programs. Today, the program has 19 faculty and has graduated more than 1,000 students cumulatively since 2020, on the way to 50 faculty and 600 students annually at full build.
Collins also guided the formation of the Institute for Advanced Computing and currently oversees the cross-cutting academic and research program anchored at Academic Building One. The institute supports new industry and government partnerships that advance research and learning opportunities and enable graduate students to address global-scale problems in close proximity to the nation’s capital.
Collins is working with leadership across the university to advance the future vision and organizational plan for its growing innovation network in the greater D.C. area, which is essential for becoming a top global research institution.
With a distinguished career as a researcher, scholar, and leader, Collins served as the dean of engineering at Cornell for 10 years. He was also part of the team that successfully bid to partner with New York City to build Cornell Tech, which opened its Roosevelt Island campus in 2017.
Collins is a professor of mechanical engineering. His research is focused on the application of direct numerical simulation to a broad range of turbulent processes.
He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and in 2021 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Collins graduated from Princeton in 1981 with honors and holds a master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, all in chemical engineering.
- Turbulence and turbulent flow analysis
- Direct numerical simulations
- Turbulent aerosol processes
- Microphysical models for atmospheric clouds
- Turbulent mixing and combustion
- Polymer drag reduction
- Numerical methods and algorithms
- Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 1987
- M.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 1987
- B.S., Chemical Engineering, Princeton University, 1981
- American Institute of Chemical Engineering Foundation Board of Trustees (AIChE)
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Advisory Council (MAE Princeton)
- MITRE Board of Trustees
- Member, National Academy of Engineering
- Society for Science Board of Trustees
- University of Delaware Engineering Advisory Council (UD COE Advisory Council)
- Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation Board of Directors (VT-ARC)
For Dr. Collins' recent publications, please visit his Google Scholar page.