May 2025 Media Highlights

ABC News - Trump claims grocery and gas prices are falling. Experts say that's misleading - Even a relatively low level of inflation indicates an increase in price levels, however, since inflation measures the pace of change in prices, David Bieri, an economist at Virginia Tech University, told ABC News. "Prices are still going up – they're just not going up as rapidly," Bieri told ABC News.

USA Today - How long will it take for a new pope to be elected? How past conclaves fared - Due to the divide between the more progressive and conservative patrons within the Catholic Church, this conclave may take longer than usual, Matthew Gabriele, a medieval studies professor at Virginia Tech, previously told USA TODAY.

USA Today - Black smoke vs. white smoke: What does each mean during the papal conclave? - On May 7, it is likely the cardinals will only conduct one round of voting, as the majority of the day will be spent taking care of introductory business, including a special sermon led by one of the church's top officials, Matthew Gabriele, a medieval studies professor at Virginia Tech, previously told USA TODAY. White or black smoke could be expected around 7-8 p.m. local time (1-2 p.m. ET).

New York - Who Attacked Flights Near the White House? After a deadly midair collision in Washington, D.C., pilots started receiving alarms that they were next. - In 2020 a team of researchers that included Ryan Gerdes, a cybersecurity researcher and professor at Virginia Tech, published a paper that explained how an attacker in the vicinity of a targeted flight could create radio messages that would make the TCAS system aboard the targeted plane think that a collision was imminent. 

The Economic Times - Earthquake may hit California, Washington, could sink Pacific Northwest region, claims study - A team of researchers from the Virginia Tech has claimed that a magnitude 8.0 and greater tremor in the Cascadia Subduction Zone could result in a tsunami and severely impact the coastal communities.

Psychology Today - Gary R Simonds MD MS FAANS - Gary Simonds, M.D., is a neurosurgeon who teaches at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and the Virginia Tech School of Neuroscience.

Earth - AI is transforming pollen science and health planning - The project was led by experts at the University of Texas at  Arlington, the University of Nevada, and Virginia Tech. Working together, the scientists trained nine machine learning models on microscope images held at the University of Nevada’s Museum of Natural History.

BobVila.com - The Secret Reason You Can't Stop Shopping The Home Depot's Garden Center - Entomologists from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University analyzed the genes of bed bugs and found that they had a resistance to dieldrin.

Interesting Engineering - 225-million-year-old predator had best-ever jaws for hunting fish - Scientists at Virginia Tech have unearthed a 225-million-year-old fish whose long, tooth-filled jaw closely resembles those of modern pike and needlefish, despite evolving millions of years earlier and from a completely separate lineage.

Inside Higher Ed - Illinois Tech Establishes First U.S. Campus in India - Altbach said U.S. colleges are more likely to establish joint degree programs with Indian universities than full branch campuses. Virginia Tech established the first of these in 2023, also in Mumbai.

Southern Living - Everything You Need To Know About Preparing Your Yard For This Year's Cicada Emergence - “It’s an incredible biological phenomenon that isn’t repeated anywhere else in the world,” says Eric Day, extension entomologist and manager of the Insect Identification Clinic at Virginia Tech.

Associated Press (also New York Post and U.S. News & World Report) - Is the Southern accent fixin’ to disappear in parts of the US South? - The diminishment of the “yat” accent is most noticeable in millennials, who were adolescents when Katrina hit, since they were exposed to other ways of speaking during a key time for linguistic development, Virginia Tech sociolinguist Katie Carmichael said in a paper published in December. 

CBS - Mission Unstoppable - Episode: Gamma Waves, Gelling Hair, and Greeting Sharks Featured Julia Basso and her work on the link between brain waves and dancing.

Forbes - The 28 Biggest U.S. Cities Are Sinking, Satellites Say. Here’s Why - "A lot of small changes will build up over time, magnifying weak spots within urban systems and heighten flood risks," said Leonard Ohenhen, lead author and a former graduate student at Virginia Tech’s Earth Observation and Innovation Lab. 

Newsweek - Scientists Warn That These Popular American Cities Are Sinking Under Residents' Feet -  Ground beneath major U.S. cities—including New York, Dallas and Seattle—is slowly but steadily sinking, with more than 20% of urban land in all 28 of the country's largest cities affected, according to new research published in Nature Cities. The study, led by researchers at Virginia Tech, found that land in these areas is dropping by two to 10 millimeters a year, mostly due to the overuse of groundwater.

New Atlas - 28 US cities are sinking – but one is going down at an alarming rate - A large team of researchers including geoscientists from Virginia Tech and Columbia University used satellite-based radar measurements to assess areas of shifting land, and found that from coast to coast, there was significant movement in both large and small urban hubs. And in 25 of the 28 cities, at least 65% of the urban area is sinking.

Popular Mechanics - 28 American Cities Are Literally Sinking Into the Earth - In a new study led by scientists at Virginia Tech, a research team tracked the subsidence (a.k.a. sinking) rate of 28 major U.S. cities across the country and found that at least 20 percent of the urban area of all of the cities was sinking to some degree. In 25 of those 28 cities, more than 65 percent of the land area was sinking to varying degrees. The most extreme example is Houston, Texas, where scientists discovered that some areas of the city were sinking as much as 10 millimeters per year. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Cities.

Business Insider - Data centers have an answer to fossil fuel emissions: Bury them - The geology and infrastructure for this don't exist widely across the US. It's not clear, for instance, whether carbon emissions could be as readily sequestered in northern Virginia, the country's largest data center market. Researchers at Virginia Tech are conducting a feasibility study on industrial carbon capture in the region, funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

Rolling Stone - Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ at Sold-Out Virginia Tech Concert Sparks Seismic Activity - Metallica played their first concert at Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium on Wednesday, where the crowd’s rapturous reaction to “Enter Sandman” — which has doubled as the Hokies football team’s intro music for the past half century — triggered the Richter scale. The Virginia Tech Seismological Observatory measured the sold-out crowd’s response to the Black Album classic, with singer James Hetfield prompting the performance with a chant of “Hokies! Let’s Go!”

Billboard - Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ Performance Registers Seismic Activity - When Metallica hit the stage at Lane Stadium on May 7, it wasn’t just another stadium show, it became a scientifically confirmed minor seismic event. As the opening chords of “Enter Sandman” rang out at the show, more than 60,000 fans jumped together, creating enough force to register ground movement. The Virginia Tech Seismological Observatory, located a mile away, detected tremors during the set and later confirmed that the crowd had, quite literally, shaken the earth.

New York Magazine - Who Attacked Flights Near the White House? - In 2020 a team of researchers that included Ryan Gerdes, a cybersecurity researcher and professor at Virginia Tech, published a paper that explained how an attacker in the vicinity of a targeted flight could create radio messages that would make the TCAS system aboard the targeted plane think that a collision was imminent.

Popular Science - What to expect on your first e-bike ride - And yes, you should wear an e-bike-specific helmet. The Bern Hudson MIPS Bike Helmet, for example, is NTA 8776-certified for speeds up to 27 miles per hour and earned a 5 out of 5 star rating from Virginia Tech’s 2025 helmet ratings. 

Earth - Complex life emerged on Earth 591 million years ago, now scientists think they figured out how it happened - The atmospheric link also finds support from geobiologist Shuhai Xiao of Virginia Tech. “The magnetosphere shields the Earth from solar wind, thus holding the atmosphere to the Earth. Thus, a weaker magnetosphere means that lighter gases such as hydrogen would be lost from the Earth’s atmosphere,” Xiao explained to CNN.

HowStuffWorks - Paradise Flying Snake Truly Falls With Style - Although it may sound like science fiction, flying snakes are very real. Researchers like Jake Socha at Virginia Tech have studied these animals in detail using slow motion photography and virtual experiments to understand how snakes fly.

Southern Living - Can Lavender Actually Help Repel Bugs? An Expert Explains - Lavender is a plant that attracts pollinators, such as native bees and butterflies. Lavender may also repel some insects like mosquitoes. The type of lavender can influence the amount of compounds it contains. "There are many different species of lavenders and their hybrids and they might not all contain the same types of plant chemicals in the same concentrations," says Dr. Theresa Dellinger, a diagnostician in the Insect Identification Lab at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. "It’s possible that the compounds extracted from different species of lavender will have different levels of activity against unwanted insect pests."

Architectural Digest - Dispatch from the Venice Architecture Biennale, Pinch Opens an NYC Showroom, and More News - Swiss furniture brand USM partnered with Virginia Tech Honors College (before his vital role in developing the school’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies in the 1960s, Swiss architect Olivio Ferrari worked with Fritz Haller, co-designer of the USM Haller system) on “Unearthed / Second Nature / Pollination.”

Times Higher Education - Redefining the university library for 2025 and beyond - Tyler Walters is dean of university libraries at Virginia Tech and governing board chair of the Academic Preservation Trust, a consortium of colleges and universities across the country committed to providing a preservation repository for digital content and developing related services.

National Geographic (France) - Animal attacks: royal cobras clash in style - "Royal cobras are venomous. They could easily bite and kill each other if they wanted to,” says Max Jones, a wildlife conservation researcher at Virginia State Polytechnic, Virginia Tech. 

NPR/National Public Radio - A pickled pepper maker knows exactly how hard it is to switch to natural food dyes - "One cost driver is that extracting large volumes of color from natural sources is far more complex than mixing chemical dyes," says Melissa Wright, a food-safety expert at Virginia Tech.

Associated Press (also NBC News, The Guardian, U.S. News & World Report, ABC News) - Four-legged investigators sniff out spotted lanternfly eggs to slow the spread of invasive pest - The dogs were trained through a research project led by a group at Virginia Tech University, which is setting out to slow the spread of the insects that are native to eastern Asia and recognizable for their distinctive black spots and bright red wing markings.

BBC News - Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers - "In a way, Windows is the ultimate infrastructure. It's why Bill Gates is so rich," says Lee Vinsel, an associate professor at Virginia Tech in the US who studies the maintenance and repair of old technology. 

CNN (also New York Post, MSN, BuzzFeed Deutschland, Gizmodo) - 1,000-foot-tall 'mega-tsunami' threatens US across three regions, experts warn - Researchers from Virginia Tech found that a potential powerful earthquake combined with rising sea levels could lead to a mega tsunami, most severely impacting residents and properties in Northern California, northern Oregon and southern Washington.

Interesting Engineering - From kneecaps to spaceships: Explainable AI can help create superalloys faster than ever - Using this approach, the study authors produced multiple principal element alloys (MPEA) with exceptional mechanical properties. “This work demonstrates how data-driven frameworks and explainable AI can unlock new possibilities in materials design,” Sanket Deshmukh, one of the study’s authors and a professor at Virginia Tech, said.

Popular Mechanics (also RedState) - Scientists Found a Hidden Force Beneath Africa That Could Split the Continent in Two - This data also aligns with a 2023 study from Virginia Tech that investigated why EARS displayed deformations parallel to the rift rather than perpendicular (which is more typical).

Scientific American - The Quantum Bubble That Could Destroy the Universe - The question motivated Stojkovic to look deeper. Working with Dai again, as well as Djordje Minic of Virginia Tech, he found that although a vacuum bubble will travel at the speed of light in empty space, it gets slowed down when it encounters massive objects such as stars and planets.