The Science Circle (SC) is an international scientific and educational network which has been using VWs to connect scientists across disciplines and institutions for teaching and learning since 2008. Besides offering presentations, discussions and classes, SC members support each others' individual VW research projects and collaborate on grant-writing and fundraising. What are the best practices that make SC a growing virtual network? Our approach is: (i) global, (ii) multi-focused, (iii) multi-tiered, (iv) sponsored, and (v) sustained. Sharing resources for teaching, learning and research helps build our collective experience across disciplines while leveraging individual members’ expertise in VW presentations and formal teaching in multiple languages as well as individual building and scripting skills appropriate to the environment. SC education/research systems are open to everyone and powered by Moodle and Google servers. Examples of SC environments are in figure 1a and 1b (Second Life Platform, Biomedicine Research Labs islands).Our session will consider the growth of SC as a case study for a broad-ranging discussion on best practices in building virtual professional networks.