University of Virginia biomedical engineering Ph.D. alumna Nikki Hastings is one of four Charlottesville-area women to receive Virginia Business’ 2025 Women in Leadership Award.
Hastings is a co-founder and executive director of CvilleBioHub, a nonprofit created with the commonwealth of Virginia and UVA to spark new life sciences startups and support the region’s burgeoning biotech business sector. The nonprofit runs the Commonwealth BioAccelerator at North Fork Discovery Park
“From an economic development perspective, if we can’t support [these technology companies], they often run against barriers in funding or talent or infrastructure,” Hastings told The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress in a recent article.
“The space that we have is starting to solve some of those problems in ways that, I think, we’re going to see more flourishing companies that emerge and stay in Virginia instead of looking to other markets to grow their business once they get to a particular point in their trajectory,” Hastings said.
Hastings also is director of the M.S. in Commerce's Biotech Track and an adjunct faculty member in the UVA McIntire School of Commerce.
Learn more about her work and the Women in Leadership Award in The Daily Progress.