Announcements

Five Winners Announced at Nutshell Games March 19

We are delighted to congratulate all 30 of the participants in the Nutshell Games!

The enthusiastic audience in the Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre at the Moss Arts Center March 19 learned about brains and bugs, cancer and incarceration, fish and fossils, bacteria and boogers, cybersecurity and streambank stability, smart phones and smart fibers, metals and meta-analyses, and much more.

Every year, the judges face the challenge of singling out just a few people to name as winners of the 90-second research talks competition. This year, our panel of judges named the following five winners:

• Prashasti Agarwal, Crop and Soil Environmental Science, Rooting for the Little Guys
• Jennifer Appiah-Kubi, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Spider-Man Hunts the Cyber-Man
• Jatia Mills, Biomedical and Veterinary Sciences, The Role of Immune Cells in Traumatic Brain Injury
• Viverjita Umashankar, Sustainable Biomaterials, Slowing the Flow of Fast-Furniture Through Internet-Enabled Local Reuse
• Ruixuan Wang, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Should I Change My Clothes?

Special thanks to our panel of judges, which this year included

• Carol Davis, Town of Blacksburg Sustainability Manager
• Sylvester Johnson, Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Humanities
• Elin Kelsey, spokesperson, scholar, educator, and author, University of Victoria School of Environmental Studies
• Karen Roberto, Executive Director of the Virginia Tech Institute for Society, Culture and Environment
• Daniel Sui, Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation, Virginia Tech
• Aimée Surprenant, Dean of Virginia Tech’s Graduate School
• Asaiah Townes, a 7th grader from Dalton Intermediate School in Radford.

The winners each receive $500. All contestants receive high quality video recordings of their presentations. And the audience now knows 90 seconds worth about 30 exciting research projects!