MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia University is ready to highlight the work completed by researchers at the university.
The 2025 iteration of WVU Research Week officially kicked off on Monday, where close to two dozen different presentations and showcases will take place across campus until Friday. WVU Research Office Associate Vice President for Creative and Scholarly Activities Melanie Page encourages the campus community and Morgantown area residents to check the variety of projects that will be shown in various parts of the campus throughout the week that will range from research in athletics to artificial intelligence.
“It’s just kind of a way to put a bunch of things in the same week where people could just really concentrate on research and all of the great work that they have done throughout the year,” said Page.
According to Page, the work highlighted as part of WVU Research Week will include presentations on energy innovations and the use of artificial intelligence, using research data to improve on athletic performance, particularly soccer. This will also include showcases of student work as part of the NASA WV Space Grant Consortium as well as new archives presented by the Eberly College History Department. Each of these presentations will include a combination of professors and researchers who have worked with the university to discuss how WVU has played a vital role in making that happen.
“We’re profiling our work in energy, in A.I., and (we’ll have) an interesting talk coming up on using big data in sports, so improving sports performance,” said Page on what will some of the research topics will be focused on this week.
WVU Research Week will also include open houses and virtual showcases of work completed on campus that will be highlighted throughout the week. This will include a showcase of the WVU Herbarium used by the Department of Biology at the Life Sciences Building, a virtual showing of research from the College of Applied Human Sciences along with the WVU Library. According to Page, these will be shown throughout the week on the WVU Research Week webpage.
“The Creative Arts students’ work is up all week virtually, so we have a variety of virtual presentations versus in-person presentations,” said Page. “So that’ll be a good way to highlight what the students are doing on campus.”
The aim of WVU Research Week is to not only highlight the work completed by graduate students from across campus but also to also show its role in Mountain State life as an economic driver. According to Page, over $250 million is annually contributed to West Virginia’s economic growth as part of university-based research not just at WVU, but also in other parts of the state, such as Marshall University and Glenville State University. With close to two dozen pieces of research being shown throughout the week, the WVU community is encouraged to check out what’s taking place on their campus.
“We have researchers working every day on trying to improve the health of West Virginians,” said Page. “So I think it’s vitally important that we recognize the importance of research to our daily lives.”