In October 1998, the Alexandria Research Institute was started in Old Town, Alexandria, as a way to get Virginia Tech faculty closer to funded research, government laboratories and industry research centers. According to their website, Virginia Tech's Advanced Research Institute was "created to position the College of Engineering as a multidisciplinary research organization in the engineering and technology R&D cluster in Northern Virginia." Professor Saifur Rahman, director of ARI, and 14 other full-time faculty members and 27 graduate students (half are Ph.D. candidates) work on research projects and publish their findings in professional journals.