Two hundred years of founding
Be a founder. Save the world.
UVA was itself a founding — a new model for public higher education. Almost nothing on this page was founded on Grounds. These are people who studied or taught here, took what they learned with them, and used it to plan other universities, write the charter of the United Nations, start the first community development corporation in the country, and build companies out of Charlottesville basements and UVA laboratories.
What they went on to build
Planned by a UVA professor of eighteen years, on the model he taught here. He became its first president.
Its academic plan and its founding president: a UVA Ph.D. who taught here first.
A UVA man chaired the U.S. delegation that wrote it.
One of the few things here that really was founded on Grounds — and still run by students.
Started by two undergraduates who lived in the same dorm.
The Foundry, Enterprise Studio and UVA LVG exist so the next one starts here.
Two centuries, in order
What UVA people founded, planned, led or set in motion — most of it far from Charlottesville. A few entries are discoveries rather than foundings, and are marked as such in the text.
A new model for public higher education
Thomas Jefferson founds the University of Virginia — a university organized around schools a student chooses among, with a library, not a chapel, at its center.
Engineering in the South
UVA establishes the first engineering school in the South, and the fourth university-level engineering school in the United States.
The Honor System
Established on a resolution by professor Henry St. George Tucker and administered by students ever since — 180-plus years of a student-run system.
MIT
William Barton Rogers, UVA’s professor of natural philosophy for eighteen years, writes the plan for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rice
Edgar Odell Lovett, who took his M.A. and Ph.D. at UVA in 1895, is inaugurated as the first president of the Rice Institute in Houston.
The Manhattan Project
Professor Jesse Beams becomes the first person to separate uranium-235, spinning uranium hexafluoride in an ultracentrifuge he designed in the basement of Rouss Hall. The Project set the centrifuge aside in 1944 for faster methods — and the rest of the world went on to enrich uranium by his.
The United Nations
Edward R. Stettinius Jr. chairs the U.S. delegation at the San Francisco conference that writes the UN Charter, then becomes the first U.S. ambassador to the UN.
The first community development corporation
Robert F. Kennedy, UVA Law 1951, drives the creation of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in Brooklyn.
Crutchfield
Bill Crutchfield, College 1965, starts a mail-order car stereo business in his mother’s basement in Charlottesville with $1,000. Fifty years on it employs 750 people in Virginia.
UVA Licensing & Ventures Group
The University establishes the 501(c)(3) that still handles every startup built on UVA intellectual property — the institutional machinery for turning a lab notebook into a company.
The Robin Hood Foundation
Paul Tudor Jones II, College 1976, co-founds what becomes New York City’s largest poverty-fighting philanthropy.
CNET
Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, UVA classmates, found the network that puts technology journalism on television and then on the web.
VMware
Mendel Rosenblum, College 1984, co-founds the company whose virtualization software becomes the foundation of the modern data center.
Cvent
Reggie Aggarwal, McIntire 1991, founds the event-management company that lists on the New York Stock Exchange in 2013 and sells for $4.6B in 2023.
Quantitative Investment Management
Jaffray Woodriff, McIntire 1991, founds a systematic trading firm in Charlottesville with Michael Geismar and Greyson Williams — and keeps it there.
Two undergraduates in Hancock House, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, launch Reddit the summer after graduation.
The Focused Ultrasound Foundation
Neal F. Kassell, M.D., a UVA neurosurgeon, founds it in Charlottesville to make focused ultrasound a mainstream treatment.
Databricks
Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji, who took his degree here in computer science and economics, co-founds the data and AI company.
Neuralink
Paul Merolla, Engineering 2000, is on the founding team of the company building a high-bandwidth interface to the nervous system.
The first seed-fund exit
TypeZero Technologies, built on UVA’s artificial-pancreas research, is acquired by Dexcom — the first exit for the UVA LVG Seed Fund.
UVA Innovates
The University creates one platform to connect twelve schools, and opens the Foundry on The Corner.
The Manning Institute
350,000 square feet of research, manufacturing and clinical care open at Fontaine Research Park.
Universities founded by UVA faculty
Neither was founded at UVA. Both were planned and first led by men who taught on these Grounds, and who carried the model out with them when they left.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts incorporated MIT on April 10, 1861 on a plan drafted by William Barton Rogers, and he became its first president in 1862 — leading it until 1870 and again from 1878 to 1881.
William Barton Rogers · UVA professor of natural philosophy, 1835–1853Rice University
Edgar Odell Lovett was inaugurated as the first president of the Rice Institute on October 12, 1912, and served until 1946.
Edgar Odell Lovett · UVA M.A. and Ph.D., 1895, and a UVA instructorInstitutions, organizations and movements
From the UN Charter to the first community development corporation in the country.
The Honor System
A single student-run system of honor, established on a resolution by professor Henry St. George Tucker and run by students for more than 180 years.
The University of VirginiaThe League of Nations
Woodrow Wilson made the League the centerpiece of his Fourteen Points; the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize citation named him the League’s founder. The U.S. Senate never ratified membership.
Woodrow Wilson · UVA Law, 1879–1880The United Nations
As Secretary of State, Edward R. Stettinius Jr. chaired the U.S. delegation to the San Francisco conference that produced the UN Charter, then served as the first U.S. ambassador to the UN. He later became Rector of the University.
Edward R. Stettinius Jr. · attended UVA 1920–1924Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation
Incorporated on April 1, 1967 and described as the first community development corporation in the United States.
Robert F. Kennedy · UVA Law, 1951The Robin Hood Foundation
Co-founded in New York, and now the city’s largest poverty-fighting philanthropy.
Paul Tudor Jones II · UVA College, 1976The Focused Ultrasound Foundation
Founded in Charlottesville to turn focused ultrasound into mainstream treatment, after an effort to build a center inside the University moved too slowly.
Neal F. Kassell, M.D. · UVA professor of neurosurgery, 1984–2016Companies founded by UVA people
A sample, not a ledger — the alumni list runs far longer than one page.
Crutchfield
Started with $1,000 in his mother’s basement in Charlottesville and built into a specialty electronics retailer of roughly $400 million in sales.
Bill Crutchfield · UVATudor Investment Corporation
One of the first global macro hedge funds, founded four years after graduation.
Paul Tudor Jones II · UVA College, 1976CNET
The technology news network went public in 1996; CBS acquired CNET Networks for $1.8 billion in 2008.
Halsey Minor · UVACvent
Event and hospitality software used by half the Fortune 500; Blackstone took the company private in 2023 at an enterprise value of about $4.6 billion.
Reggie Aggarwal · UVA B.S.Quantitative Investment Management
A systematic trading firm built and still run in Charlottesville. Its founder’s Quantitative Foundation later made the $120M gift that created the School of Data Science.
Jaffray Woodriff · McIntire 1991Launched by two 2005 graduates who had been dorm mates in Hancock House; sold to Condé Nast in 2006 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2024.
Steve Huffman, Engineering 2005 · Alexis Ohanian, McIntire 2005Apex Clean Energy
A Charlottesville-based developer of wind and solar projects, with more than 12,000 megawatts in development across some twenty states.
Sandy Reisky · McIntire, 1988Teachstone
Built on the CLASS classroom-observation research developed at UVA, and now used to train teachers nationally.
Robert C. Pianta and Bridget K. Hamre · UVA education researchersRhoback
The performance apparel brand, founded by two Darden graduates and a partner, took a roughly $50 million investment from Champ in 2025.
Matt Loftus, Darden 2016 · Kristina Loftus, Darden 2017 · Kevin HubbardOut of the labs
UVA LVGEvery company built on UVA intellectual property comes through the Licensing & Ventures Group, whose portfolio lists more than 60 active companies.
HemoSonics
Quantra point-of-care blood coagulation diagnostics, out of UVA biomedical engineering.
William F. Walker · Francesco Viola · Michael LawrenceAdial Pharmaceuticals
Developing AD04, a genetically targeted treatment for alcohol use disorder invented at UVA; listed on Nasdaq in July 2018.
Bankole Johnson, M.D. · William Stilley, McIntire 1990, Darden 1997 · Joseph TruluckBrightSpec
Molecular rotational resonance spectroscopy instruments licensed from UVA chemistry.
Bob Lloyd · Dave McDanielEveractive
Battery-free industrial sensing, on technology licensed from UVA and Michigan.
Benton Calhoun · Brendan Richardson · David WentzloffTypeZero Technologies
Commercialised UVA’s artificial-pancreas control algorithms; acquired by Dexcom in 2018.
Boris Kovatchev · Marc Breton · Stephen PatekSpringbok Analytics
AI muscle analysis from MRI, from UVA biomedical engineering, kinesiology and radiology.
Silvia Salinas Blemker · Joe Hart · Craig MeyerContraline
Developing ADAM, an injectable, ultrasound-visible male contraceptive hydrogel.
Kevin EisenfratsAgroSpheres
Bioparticles that deliver biomolecules for agriculture and industrial enzymes.
Mark Kester · Payam Pourtaheri · Ameer Shakeel510 Kardiac Devices
The Lim Transseptal System for structural heart procedures; acquired by Keystone Heart in 2020.
Scott Lim, M.D. · UVA interventional cardiologyLaser Thermal
Instruments that measure how heat moves through microchips and other materials, at scales up to 10,000 times smaller than a human hair. Backed by an SBIR grant through CHIPS for America, with Fortune 500 companies and research universities among its customers.
Patrick Hopkins and John Gaskins · out of UVA mechanical and aerospace engineeringHyku Biosciences
Launched with $56 million to build covalent medicines on UVA chemoproteomics research.
Ku-Lung (Ken) Hsu · UVA chemistry