Nova Labs is proud to congratulate Mary Thompson, Director of our FIRST Robotics program, on being recognized with the She Leads FIRST Women in STEM Award at the 2026 FIRST Chesapeake District Championship.

Thanks to the incredible generosity of our community, the Nova Labs Capital Campaign has officially closed at $114,851, surpassing our $100,000 goal and unlocking an additional $15,000 matching grant. Together, we are making important improvements to our shared makerspace and investing in Nova Labs' future.

Announcing the release of the 2025 Annual Report. It was year of both impact and opportunity at Nova Labs. Once again, the kindness, generosity, and resilience of our members and affiliates shone through. We continue to be deeply grateful for — and inspired by — this community.

Can you believe this past December marks three years since we moved to Fairfax? Way back when our main focus was just keeping the power on and passing fire marshal inspections. We've come such a long way since then, from clearing space and building walls, to developing some awesome programs and building strong relationships with the broader community. Check out Nova Lab's first ever Annual Report below to learn what we've been doing and where we're focusing on going next, or

We’ve been busy and productive these last few weeks. We’re finishing phase 1 construction, separating our space from our tenant, SunDog. And in huge news, 1916 in Reston is now empty! All tools, materials, and furniture have moved to Nova Labs’ new home at 3850 Jermantown Road, Fairfax VA. Thank you to each and every one of our incredible, hard-working volunteers. The build-out, packing, and moving has been amazingly quick and even smoother than we had hoped. NL3 Current Stat

Happy New Year, members and friends! What an amazing year this has been! We started off with a dream of NL3, and here we are, the proud owners of a 38k sqft building, with construction well underway, and weeks away from moving in. Thank you for your ongoing support and patience - it has been a bumpy ride to get here, but we have made so much progress and we are excited to see what 2022 brings. VOLUNTOUR WEEKEND: January 8th and 9th we are going to have a NL3-wide volunteer ro

Greeting Nova Labs members and friends! First, we’d like to welcome our new Executive Director, Derrick Washington; you can learn more about him on the Nova Labs blog. He has great past experience and we are thankful to have him join us at this busy time. We are making great progress fo Please see the member Capital Ccampaign information and donate today! If you can’t directly donate, please share the message on social media or see what support your employer may provide. Our

Crafters Cove donation kiosk panel And we have another $15K added to our Donation Kiosk tracker! Thank you to Fabiana for leading the charge on the silent auction! Plus the Facebook fundraiser has captured over $5K to date (including some pending matching from Facebook on Giving Tuesday). We still need those donations coming in for the next few weeks so we can get ahead of the moving costs as well as submit them for the 2:1 match opportunity. Forward to your friends and famil

More exciting news to share with you: The Nova Labs board is pleased to announce that Derrick Washington has accepted the role of Executive Director and will be starting with us Monday, November 22nd. Derrick is a program director with more than 15 years of experience in the fields of Education, Social Work, and Human Services, to include workforce development, policy design, program development, program management, project management, vocational and occupational skills trai

Greeting Nova Labs members and friends! Lots of exciting news to share about our new building and move-in plans. To help keep everyone in the loop about all the developments with NL3 we are going to provide more frequent updates via Slack, email, and web. Thanks for your patience as we’ve been running full speed trying to get things done. To set expectations for the first few months in our new home — we will be living in a renovation for a while. Construction will be tackled

Board announcement regarding the makerspace move. As we near Nova Labs' 10th anniversary, the board is excited to announce that we have taken the next big step in our future by securing a permanent home for Nova Labs. We have voted to move forward with the acquisition of the Jermantown Rd property in Fairfax City. We will close on the property at the end of October, begin construction immediately, and move in February. Nova Labs will need your support as we move into the next