The Fralin Life Sciences Institute at Virginia Tech

Extra thankful for our planet and all the creatures that call it home this 🌎💚

Sinking our teeth into new research!🦇🙌

Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources and Environment associate professor Luis E. Escobar and Ph.D. student Analorena Cifuentes-Rincon were recently part of an international team that found female vampire bats outsize their male counterparts.

This discovery may help explain how s*x differences influence rabies spread and mitigation.

Head to the link in our bio to learn more about these fang-tastic findings!

Celebrating science!🎉✨

We enjoyed being a part of the Virginia Tech Science Festival, along with our partners , , and the 's Center for Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies (COMPASS).

Attendees participated in various hands-on activities, experienced fascinating demonstrations, and spoke face-to-face with researchers at more than 50 exhibits.

Thanks to Kristy Collins, our outreach coordinator, we had booths where students and families made origami bugs, camouflaged pipe cleaner bugs, and fingerprint bug pins to keep as souvenirs! They also made "squishy circuits", where they used conductive and nonconductive dough to create a circuit and light up an LED.🦗💡

Join the First-Year Fralin Undergraduate Research Fellowship!🔬✨

As a first-year, gain valuable research experience under the direct mentorship of a faculty member! A $1,350 stipend will be awarded annually to individual students demonstrating academic excellence and a strong interest in undergraduate research.

Don’t pass up this fang-tastic opportunity! Head to the link in our bio to apply by 5 p.m. on October 31 🎃

Fralin Fabulous Five Spotlight! Meet assistant professor Bryan Hsu 🔬
• He has built a highly interdisciplinary research group, incorporating chemistry, materials science, and microbiology to pursue groundbreaking research.
• With research aimed at improving women’s health, Hsu and his trainees developed a sustainable and biodegradable menstrual care material. This research received international recognition and was highlighted in several notable news outlets, including , , and .
• He was awarded a prestigious /Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award grant. This year, he was appointed ’s Mary Blackwood Junior Faculty Fellow.

Virginia Tech graduate students Marija Corluka and Sara Zdancewick, along with Kalyn Price from , present their latest research at the Third Molecular Biophysics Symposium in Steger Hall🔬✨