The Higher Education Equipment Trust Fund, or HEETF, awards state funds each year to colleges and universities for technology and teaching equipment. Established in 1986 by the Virginia General Assembly, HEETF helps purchase equipment for instruction and research.

Virginia Commonwealth University’s health sciences schools have each benefited enormously throughout the years from HEETF funding. In many cases, HEETF equipment has augmented laboratories and research projects so significantly that additional grants from other sources have been awarded to sustain existing studies or to begin new ones. In this way, HEETF funds are considered vital to the scientific and academic process.

“HEETF supports significant advances in the health sciences, ultimately providing faculty and students access to cutting-edge technology and information. It continually proves an invaluable resource to VCU,” says Sheldon M. Retchin, M.D., MSPH, VCU vice president for health sciences and CEO of the VCU Health System.

Highlighted here are seven HEETF success stories from the schools of Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy and the Massey Cancer Center. Each underscores how these funds help further research, broaden the educational experience of VCU students and benefit the health care community at large.