skip to main content
large group of neuroscience student's and director, Harry Sonteheimer, standing on a beach with water and Italian mountains in the background

Our Students

We love our students. They are why we are here. When they succeed, we succeed. In the Virginia Tech College of Science, our students work alongside our faculty to help make people healthier, the planet more sustainable, and our communities stronger.

Here are just some of our favorite photos from the past year showing our students doing exactly that. We’re working to make the region’s drinking water supply cleaner, to understand epilepsy, to remediate problems caused by sea level rise, to better understand the genes that regulate our sleep patterns, to improve the effectiveness of vaccines, to use data to solve our most vexing issues, and more.

We do this in all of our core scientific disciplines of Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Economics, Geosciences, Mathematic, Physics, Psychology, and Statistics, and our ever-growing new programs of Computational Modeling and Data Analytics, Nanoscience, Nanomedicine, and Systems Biology, all part of Integrated Science in our Academy of Integrated Science, and through our School of Neuroscience, which holds the distinction of hosting the nation's only undergraduate program in clinical neuroscience.

girl in foregroung looks up a screen connected to microscope with female instructor in background watching

Nanomedicine makes big impact as new major

Interest in our undergraduate nanoscience program, one of two in the nation, spurred us to create a new major — nanomedicine. The program launched in August 2018 and within a year has brought in 34 students.

Further reading: College of Science launches first of its kind nanomedicine major for undergraduate

Neuroscience students travel abroad for summer class

Our School of Neuroscience in summer 2019 hosted 20 students during its inaugural study abroad program at the Steger Center for International Scholarship in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland, with a side-trip to Italy to visit Florence and Milan, the latter for classwork (cover image). Headed by Harald Sontheimer, executive director of the school, and Kristin Phillips, associate director of undergraduate programs, the expedition garnered interest from 46 students. Interest has increased for the year 2020, with 58 students applying.

Esther wearing lab coat and blue nitrile gloves pipettes into PCR tray on lab bench
Amber in lab coat pipetting into centrifuge tubes in rack

Two Science students named Goldwater Scholars

Two of the three Virginia Tech students named as 2019 Barry Goldwater Scholars hail from the College of Science. Each was celebrated for their research work. Amber Abbott (above, right) is majoring in microbiology in the Department of Biological Science, and as a Fralin Undergraduate Research Fellow, she has worked in the lab of Andrea Bertke, associate professor of infectious diseases in public health. Esther Wisdom (above, left), a double major in microbiology and biochemistry in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is studying circadian proteins and their relation to cancer incidence in the lab of Carla Finkielstein, associate professor of biological sciences.

Further reading: Three students win 2019 Goldwater Scholarships