Dr. Tombes speaking at the grand opening of the VCU Rice Rivers Center Research Facility

VCU's River Campus

The VCU Rice Rivers Center, VCU's river campus, supports scholarship and student instruction across diverse disciplines, including water resources, climate science, wildlife conservation and wetlands restoration.

Located midway between Richmond and Williamsburg, Virginia along the historic James River, our 360 acres of riparian marshes, tidal creeks and mature forests represent a unique outdoor laboratory for important applied research and innovative, experiential classes. The center’s modern facilities offer offices, classrooms, laboratories and overnight lodging for students, faculty, visiting scholars and community groups. State-of-the-art technologies are deployed onsite to collect information on air and water quality, fish and avian migrations, changing sea levels and a host of other critical data sources. Our ongoing partnerships with state and federal natural resource and earth science agencies provide significant training opportunities for student scholars.

News & Events

News

The Distinguished Faculty Awards honorees will be recognized at the VCU Faculty Recognition Gala on Tuesday, Oct. 27.

Aug. 27, 2026

VCU honors seven with 2026 Distinguished Faculty Awards

Their work touches on medicine, the humanities, public service and education.

This summer, Aarushi Rao worked with Guangwei Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Medicine, to develop a tool that helps researchers analyze screening images from experiments more efficiently. (Dean Hoffmeyer, Enterprise Marketing and Communications)

Aug. 27, 2026

In VCU neuroscience lab, undergraduate Aarushi Rao brought brainpower to new software

The sophomore Honors College student and biology major spent her summer with researcher Guangwei Zhang, developing a tool to improve analysis of images.

The VCU Convergence Team Planning Grant Program is reserved for projects of three or more full-time faculty from at least two different schools or colleges that focus on problems that defy single-discipline solutions. (Adobe Stock)

Aug. 26, 2026

VCU Convergence awards nearly 70 faculty members $150,000 in seed grants

The projects supported through the grants bring different perspectives together to tackle complex, ‘wicked problems’ that no single discipline can solve.

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