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Center for Communicating Science - teal and orange logo
Center for Communicating Science - teal and orange logo
Applying collaboration & arts practices to help scientists and others learn to tell their stories and connect across differences:
35,000 people impacted through our courses, workshops, presentations, and outreach.
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At Virginia Tech's Center for Communicating Science, we create and support experiences for scientists, engineers, scholars, and health professionals to build muscles of connection, communication, and collaboration. What sets us apart from other approaches and makes our work effective is that we use the powerful tools of the arts, including embodied learning, deep listening, improvisation, role play, and storytelling.
We believe in the power of play, and we believe that we learn through experience and by reflecting on our experiences.
We aim to help researchers make their communication more personal, direct, spontaneous, and responsive.
Communicating Science Mission Words: Personal
Build trust and learn through connection and engagement. Share stories, values, and emotions.
Communicating Science Mission Words: Direct
Drop your field-specific jargon; avoid acronyms; find a language in common with your audience.
Communicating Science Mission Words: Spontaneous
Learn relaxation and rehearsal techniques to build confidence in your ability to explain your research.
Communicating Science Mission Words: Responsive
Who is your audience? What do they need? What can you learn from them? How do you connect?
What's happening at the center?
Winners Selected for the 2025 Nutshell Games
People fill a stage, under bright lighting, celebrating and smiling. A large slide behind them reads Nutshell Games! in orange lettering.
October 23: Packed with wild ideas like “poop to the rescue,” “rubber that fixes itself,” and “listening to the coldest whisper in the universe," the 2025 Nutshell Games was just as fun for the audience as it was for the speakers. And although we consider every one of the 29 presenters to be winners, here are the official judges' picks and audience choice award winner:
- Monica Shanmugam, Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, "A jet engine that can talk back"
- Beyza Nur Guler, Engineering Education, "Who swiped left on my job application?"
Gabe Isaac, Neuroscience, "Ultrasound: A new tune for treating pain"
- Binita Saha, Macromolecular Science and Engineering, "What if bacteria helped fight cancer?"
November 18 - Distilling Your Message (workshop for Virginia Tech Writers and Editors meeting)
November 20 - Science on Tap New River Valley. The Prospects of Poop: What can bat guano tell us about past environments in Virginia? It’s easy to dismiss poop as waste, but poop actually contains a whole lot of information about animal diets, behavior, and the environments they live in. Join Rachel Reid, a research assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, to learn about how information contained in bat poop can be used to uncover past landscapes, from the types of plants present to the frequency of fires. Then, find out how your diet influences your chemical composition, and how it can be measured (no poop required!). 5:30 p.m. at Rising Silo Brewery, 2351 Glade Road, Blacksburg. Free and open to the public.
You can read about these events on our events page, and, for a more in-depth view at some of the Center for Communicating Science's latest activities, read our newsletter.
Here's some of what we've been up to recently:
11/15/2025 - Flip the Fair at the Science Festival, Center for the Arts.
11/14/2025 - Introduction to Improvisation for Science Communication (workshop for Professional Skills in Natural Resources course)
10/23/2025 — Nutshell Games, Virginia Tech's Center for the Arts.
9/25/2025 — Flip the Fair, Melrose Branch, Roanoke Public Libraries
10/8/2025 - Eight Years of Community-Centered Science Outreach: Lessons from Science on Tap, The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center. Part of the 2025 Engagement Scholarship Consortium Conference.
10/9/2025 - Wellness Begins with ‘We:’ Trust in Pandemic Prediction & Prevention Panel Discussion, The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center. Part of the 2025 Engagement Scholarship Consortium Conference.
8/28/2025 — Science on Tap, New River Valley (Alasdair Cohen: Safe Drinking Water Access in Rural Regions: Progress and Pitfalls)
8/21/2025 Communicating Science workshop for computer science faculty and staff
7/31/2025 Pandemic Science in a Nutshell Games, Alexandria, Virginia
7/24/2025 Science on Tap, New River Valley (Prescott Vayda: How do we place early animal fossils on the tree of life?)
7/22/2025 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program: Students Transforming Energy and Environmental Research (STEER) workshop
7/16/2025 Communicating Science Series workshop for COMPASS Center (Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies) faculty
7/15/2025 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program: Students Transforming Energy and Environmental Research (STEER) workshop
7/14/2025 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows workshop
7/9/2025 Communicating Science Series workshop for COMPASS Center (Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies) faculty
7/8/2025 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program: Students Transforming Energy and Environmental Research (STEER) workshop
7/2/2025 Communicating Science Series workshop for COMPASS Center (Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies) faculty
7/1/2025 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program: Students Transforming Energy and Environmental Research (STEER) workshop
6/26/2025 Science on Tap, New River Valley (Kevin Kochersberger: From the Wright Brothers to Advanced Air Mobility: 122 Years of Flight)
6/25/2025 Communicating Science Series workshop for COMPASS Center (Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies) faculty
6/24/2025 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program: Students Transforming Energy and Environmental Research (STEER) workshop
6/23/2025 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows workshop
6/21/2025 Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity summer program staff workshop
6/18/2025 Communicating Science Series workshop for COMPASS Center (Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies) faculty
6/17/2025 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program: Students Transforming Energy and Environmental Research (STEER) workshop
6/14/2025 Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity summer program staff workshop
6/13/2025 Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity summer program staff workshop
6/11/2025 Communicating Science Series workshop for COMPASS Center (Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies) faculty
6/10/2025 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program: Students Transforming Energy and Environmental Research (STEER) workshop
6/9/2025 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows workshop
6/3/2025 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program: Students Transforming Energy and Environmental Research (STEER) workshop
5/19/2025 Whole Health Consortium 's "Whole Health, Whole Communities" symposium, Roanoke, Virginia (World Cafe facilitation)
5/13/2025 Communicating science faculty intensive
5/7/2025 Communicating science all-conference workshop, Southeastern Sustainability Directors Network annual meeting, Richmond, Virginia
4/24/2025 Science on Tap, New River Valley (Karyn Schy, Briann Brown, Jack Browning, Alana Hutchinson, and Alexis Mann: Neuroscience Night)
4/14/2025 "Distilling Your Message for Teaching and Outreach: Brief and Compelling Interactions with the People You Need to Talk to," an online CETL/CIRTL/TLOS workshop
4/3/2025 "Science on Tap New River Valley: A Successful Outreach Program Since 2017," poster presentation at Science Talk '25, Maria DeNunzio and Amy Hagen
3/27/2025 "Building a Communicating Science Ecosystem at a Land Grant University: Sharing Lessons." Panel discussion at Science Talk '25
3/27/2025 Science on Tap, New River Valley (Brogan Holcombe: Fitbits for black bears in Virginia?)
3/24/2025 "Improv Skills for Science Communicators." Workshop at Science Talk '25 facilitated by Jon Catherwood-Ginn, online format.
3/5/2025 "Picture a Scientist" and "Reel Talk" panel discussion with Virginia Tech faculty and students about the status of women in the STEM professions
3/4/2025 The Faculty Nutshell Talks!
3/3/2025 Faculty Nutshell Talks preparatory workshop, Part 2
2/28/2025 Fralin Fridays, hosted by the Center for Communicating Science
2/27/2025 Science on Tap, New River Valley (Noel Naughton: How does an octopus control its arms?)
2/14/2025 Tailor Your Message to Your Audience (workshop for Science Outreach course)
2/7/2025 Cultivating Science Communicator Identities (ICAT Playdate)
2/4/2025 The Art of Communicating Science (Virginia Cooperative Extension winter conference workshop)
1/31/2025 Faculty Nutshell Talks preparatory workshop
1/23 Science on Tap, New River Valley (Maria DeNunzio: Food for Thought: How Retail Spaces Shape Our Choices and the Planet)
1/23/2025 Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn (workshop for honors course on developing assistive technologies)
Center for Communicating Science - teal and orange logo
Center for Communicating Science
230 Grove Lane
Blacksburg, VA 24061
(Campus mail code: 0555)
Director Patty Raun
praun@vt.edu
Associate Director Carrie Kroehler
cjkroehl@vt.edu