Core research and Extension programs at the Virginia Tech - Virginia Seafood AREC focus on seafood safety, seafood quality of wild caught and cultured animals and products, business and marketing support for the commercial and aquaculture industries, engineering, thermal processing, intensive saltwater recirculating aquaculture, and education/ outreach for industry and consumers. The VSAREC is in the midst of significant program expansion. Infrastructure-wise, $9 million in funding, from various sources, was completed in the fall of 2019 to build a new Center adjacent to the old and failing site. Architectural/construction engineering review and final permitting is in process, with groundbreaking anticipated early spring, 2020. Construction is projected for completion 12 months thereafter. In addition to our team of faculty, two new Tenure-track faculty lines were added, one in 2018 (Food Quality and Safety - Dr. Reza Ovissipour) and one in 2019 (Agriculture Economics and Marketing - Dr. Jonathan van Senten), and a third Tenure-track position (Traceability and Blockchain) has been approved for early 2020. New major program area expansions are currently underway including: Sustainable Food Production Systems (aquaponics, microbiome, RAS, alternative proteins including plants, and insects, probiotics, and cellular aquaculture); Economics and Marketing (policy and regulatory impacts, farm production economics, economic impact analysis, financial benchmarking, and automation/robotics); in addition to offshore renewable energy and co-location of synergistic activities. A new Programmatic pillar for the VSAREC on Traceability (Big Data managements, Blockchain technologies, etc.,) is slated for 2020. Once construction begins on the new center, efforts in earnest will commence to develop the first of several large-scale industrially applied R&D centers.