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Our Approach
Universities exist to produce new knowledge and share it with the world. At Â鶹Æƽâ°æ, an R1 university, the Global Research Institute turns that mission into real-world impact. Two goals drive everything we do:
- Produce more useful knowledge. We support applied research, grounded in rigorous science, that answers real questions for policymakers, communities, and global leaders.
- Provide a better education. We integrate students into every stage of that research as genuine partners, accelerating their growth as scholars and as people.
The measure of our work is not what we know; it is what our knowledge allows others to do.
How We Serve Â鶹Æƽâ°æ
GRI is the university's research incubator. We operate like a venture fund for global impact: we identify breakthrough ideas from W&M faculty, seed them with flexible funding and dedicated staff, accelerate the most promising into fully staffed, nationally competitive initiatives, and graduate them into permanent homes across campus. GRI is designed to grow by letting go, and every successful incubation strengthens a school or department somewhere else at Â鶹Æƽâ°æ.
Our funding is open to faculty from every school and discipline. If the idea is bold and the question matters, we want to support the research team.
Our Record
AidData is our best-known graduate. It began as a three-person project inside GRI and now informs decisions at the State Department and the World Bank.
And it’s not the only GRI idea to launch beyond the Institute. The Gates Forum started in a GRI conference room and is being institutionalized as the Robert M. Gates Initiative in American Statecraft. The Wargaming Lab began as a student initiative and now runs simulations in Washington for external clients.
Over twenty years, GRI has launched dozens of initiatives, generated more than $100 million in external funding, and trained more than 2,500 students in hands-on research alongside faculty.
Not every project needs to become the next AidData. Some ideas run their course in a single summer of student research; others grow into permanent centers. The model works at every scale: test the idea, learn fast, and invest more where the results warrant it.
GRI brings together research teams and their external partners at Gates Hall, W&M's new interdisciplinary hub, convening more than 40 affiliated faculty spanning AI, geopolitics, foreign policy, public health, climate science, data analytics, and whatever field the next big idea comes from.
Come Build With Us
If you're a researcher ready to test an ambitious idea, a student who wants to do real research from day one, or an organization that needs answers to hard problems, GRI is where you build what's next at Â鶹Æƽâ°æ. And if you'd like to invest in the model itself, we'd welcome that conversation. Big ideas live here.