Data Center Summit attracts industry, partners

There is probably no single topic as fast-moving, complex, and significant at Virginia in 2026 as data centers. With the landscape evolving quickly and massive new challenges popping up seemingly every day, it was the perfect time to convene leaders and researchers from across the far-ranging ecosystem to collaborate at the Data Center Summit, which brought together more than 150 organizations on May 5 at Virginia Tech’s academic building in Alexandria.

In many ways, the university is optimally positioned — both physically and programmatically — to be the center for such convenings. In addition to having researchers driving efficiency gains through research on alternate artificial intelligence (AI) systems and better algorithms, the space in Potomac Yard offers a physical connection point at the gateway to data center alley to coalesce what is ultimately a fairly fractured set of overlapping industries, offering a rare opportunity to put everyone in the same room at the same time.

“The data center question and the work that we do touches on all of the disciplines across engineering in the ways that not very many applications do,” said Executive Vice President and Provost Julie Ross. “For us, as an institution, we’re pretty uniquely positioned in the region to be able to do that and to bring those pieces to bear.”

Panels included discussions about the capacity and reliability of power solutions; designing, building, and deploying data centers at scale; compute, cloud, and complex workloads; and security and resilience in critical infrastructure. There were also lunch discussions on infrastructure efficiency and resource resilience, next frontiers in AI-enabled chips, small modular reactors and next-gen power, and the Coalition for Smart Construction, a topic upon which co-chairman of HITT Contracting Brett Hitt expounded, delivering a future vision of the industry at this critical juncture.

Kirk Cameron, managing director of the Institute for Advanced Computing, spent the early part of his career working in data centers and believes that connecting the power supply side with the compute demand side of the industry is fundamental to solving the massive energy challenge of the next few years. He saw this event as the opportunity to do exactly that, and was encouraged by the outcome.

“People on multiple panels spoke about the need to get people together that are both using the systems and designing the infrastructure around them,” said Cameron. “So I was very excited about it.”

The conference drew attendees from across industry and public entities, including:

• Cloud and hyperscalers AWS, Microsoft, Dell, Google, Oracle, and IBM Cloud 
• Data center developers, managers, and builders HITT Contracting, M.C. Dean, CloudHQ, and Hensel Phelps
• Energy and infrastructure companies like Dominion Energy, ABB, Washington Gas, Bloom Energy, Trane, Flex, and Vertiv
• Semiconductor and compute manufacturers AMD, ARM, and NVIDIA
• Defense contractors like Northrop Grumman, Boeing, HII, and Lockheed Martin
• Public entities like the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, along with other policy leaders

“The challenge around data centers is really not something any single entity can address, so we need people from industry, from utilities, from government, from regulators, data center developers, and, of course, the business side,” said Ali Mehrizi-Sani, director of the Power and Energy Center and professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering who has convened prior discussions around data centers. “What Virginia Tech adds is essentially the research and the workforce aspects. Events like this, where we bring people together to start having these conversations, are really, really valuable, especially in this fast-moving area.”

Multiple participants expressed the hope that the innovations in efficiency, heat recovery, smart construction and more can provide lasting benefits far beyond the data center industry. Solving the size and complexity of the power challenge, including through smart construction, opens the door to better infrastructure everywhere.

“If you can model the next generation of large-scale infrastructure, and you can accurately predict how long it will take to produce, what it will cost, how it will perform, that’s where really advanced modeling changes the world,” said Bill Dean, CEO of M.C. Dean, who delivered the industry insider perspective on smart infrastructure. “You have the data center business and you have the smart construction consortium, and they’re really symbiotic.”

As our society becomes more electrified in general, from large-scale manufacturing down to personal automobiles, there will only be more need for electrical power, and more need for advances in creating and delivering that power. That again positions Virginia Tech as not simply a place to talk about how to solve these challenges, but a place to get to work on powering the future of the commonwealth, the country, and the world.

“When we look at the technical challenges, we really look at these as opportunities for research,” said Mehrizi-Sani, who is also a Bradley Senior Fellow. “The skills and the infrastructure that we put together as we address data centers are going to be extremely useful for these other sectors of the economy and these other use cases as well.”