Newsletter

Oct. 26, 2023. Mark your calendars: It’s time for the Nutshell Games! In this fast, fun, and friendly research presentation competition, 30 graduate researchers tell their research stories in just 90 seconds to a public audience and a panel of judges representing both Virginia Tech and our local community — including, as always, a 7th grader. Following a day of fun and learning at the Science Festival, the Nutshell Games will take place at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, November 11, at the Moss Arts Center.

Oct. 13, 2023. The Center for Communicating Science at VT ended this warm, sunny August with a bang – and a brew! Hosted at Rising Silo Brewery, the center’s monthly science outreach event Science on Tap featured Matt Gentry, local artist and outdoorsman, who shared his process for capturing the beauty of nature in watercolor and sketches.

Sept. 24, 2023. Pregnant cows in the dark, thought experiments in quantum physics, bees and weed(killer), and the mysterious disappearance of a giant salamander species: all these and many more have been the topics of Nutshell Games talks. What are you pursuing in research? How effectively can you communicate it to an audience who may not speak your research language? Add a 90-second limit to the requirements, and you’ve got the Nutshell Games, a fun and fast-paced presentation competition hosted since 2017 by Virginia Tech’s Center for Communicating Science.

Sept. 24, 2023. A stop sign, a balance board, a steering wheel, a viola, a magnet model: These were the attention-grabbing props used by the five winners of the first-ever Faculty Nutshell Talks, held September 7 at the Moss Arts Center. The Center for Communicating Science (CCS) hosted a group of 16 courageous faculty members who brought their research to the stage, communicating their work in a mere 90 seconds to an audience of family, students, colleagues, and community members.

Sept. 1, 2023. What could possibly be more fun than the Center for Communicating Science’s annual graduate student presentation competition, the Nutshell Games? Come and find out! Please join us for the first-ever Faculty Nutshell Talks! Scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Thursday, September 7, at the Moss Arts Center, this pilot Faculty Nutshell Talks event will feature more than a dozen courageous and groundbreaking faculty speakers.

May 18, 2023. Center for Communicating Science faculty are looking forward to developing new projects and working with new collaborators this summer. We also appreciate continued work with others. Our summer initiatives include a German Fulbright "Communicating Across Differences" program, communicating science intensives and workshops for postdoctoral research fellows and NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate participants, workshops with the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity, and more.

May 18, 2023. With rhododendrons in full bloom, it’s hard to remember that this busy semester began in the cold month of January. But it did, and the semester was full of workshops, courses, visits and consultations, and more for Center for Communicating Science faculty and affiliates.

May 18, 2023. This semester we want to shine a spotlight on just some of the graduate student work related to communicating science that’s happening in our community. The students who take GRAD 5144, Communicating Science, go on to spearhead their own projects, facilitate workshops on behalf of the center, and engage in creative science outreach.

May 18, 2023. Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and currently at work on a book about the use of animals in research, visited Virginia Tech April 11. Joined by members of the Lacks family, she delivered the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science’s 2023 Hugh and Ethel Kelly Lecture, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and led a narrative nonfiction writing seminar for graduate students.

May 18, 2023. “Indigenous Knowledges are scientific, expert, and valid — and useful,” stated Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq, keynote speaker for ComSciCon-Virginia Tech 2023. Recognizing the truth of that statement is key to antiracist science communication, she said.