February 2025 Media Highlights

CBS News - Airspace in Washington, D.C. known as 'complex' - Ella Atkins: “We have a very complex airspace in the DC area, in part because there are a lot of sensitive government buildings, and we don't want aircraft of any sort flying over them, especially at low altitude. The commercial traffic therefore flies over the Potomac River on approach and departure from Reagan [Airport] runways, and the helicopters also fly over the Potomac River, not only for safety reasons, but also for noise reasons. A lot of these helicopters make a lot of noise as they fly over especially residential areas. That means that we have a little bit of air space and we have a lot of traffic of different types to fit through.” 

Washington Post - Maryland releases design for new Key Bridge - “I think the design goes a long way to making this as impervious to another collision as possible,” said Roberto Leon, a civil engineering professor at Virginia Tech. “No bridge design at the time that the previous bridge was built would have been protected the way it’s protected now.” 

Fortune - Trump’s tariff war has turned into an egg war at Costco - “There is no known link at the moment between bird flu and sickness in humans through food contact, but a good year-round choice is to cook your food,” Melissa Wright, MS, director of the Food Producer Technical Assistance Network at Virginia Tech.

Inside Higher Education - Preparing Proactively for a Postdoc [Op-ed] - “I highly encourage any new postdoc to create an individual development plan to outline their project completion, skill development and career advancement goals." Chris Smith is Virginia Tech’s postdoctoral affairs program administrator.

Grist - Trump's quest for 'energy dominance' is all about the vibes - Trump started talking about “energy dominance” during his presidential campaign in 2016, alongside wishful promises to bring back coal. “That language does have this bravado and machismo that is important to his movement,” said Cara Daggett, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech University. 

HuffPost Greece - Nuvia: Africa breaks in and a new continent is being created (Video) - In a 2020 study by Virginia Tech, researchers suggested that new oceans would first form in the northern part of the Rim. The D. Sarah Stamps, a professor for the Department of Geosciences, said, "The rate of expansion is faster in the north, so we will see new oceans forming first there." 

CNN - ‘Not Like Us’ started as a diss. Now, it’s a Super Bowl anthem - “As much as it’s a diss song, it’s also a unifying song,” said Frederick Paige, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and co-founder of Virginia Tech Diggin’ in the Crates: Hip Hop Studies at the university… It’s also intensely catchy and quotable (though most of its blows can’t be repeated here), said Craig Arthur, an associate professor of practice at Virginia Tech and DJ who also co-founded the university’s hip-hop studies program.

HuffPost - This Video About Kanye West’s Antisemitism Has Over 8,000 ‘Likes.’ That Should Scare You. - “Many of the video’s features, like its grayscale, quick cuts and blank background, make it really hard to spot the kinds of tell-tale signs we’ve come to expect from generative AI,” said Julia Feerrar, an associate professor and the head of digital literacy initiatives at the University Libraries at Virginia Tech.

IFL Science - “They’re Advancing Much Faster Than Anticipated,” Hybrid Fire Ant Threat Heats Up In Virginia - “When two different species interbreed, they can ‘borrow’ genes from one another,” said Scotty Yang, assistant professor in the Virginia Tech Department of Entomology, told Virginia Tech News.

Stateline - USAID shutdown would halt research grants to state universities - “Grants from outside agencies like USAID allow us to seek and receive additional funding that, in turn, allows us to further advance our teaching, research and engagement central to our land grant mission,” said Mark Owczarski, a spokesperson for Virginia Tech.

CNN (Romania) - Ce vrea Trump să obțină din războiul comercial dintre SUA și Europa? Expert american: Dacă UE e prea puternică, ne afectează interesele - US President Donald Trump wants to see a Europe with less economic and commercial power, and not an independent Europe that could challenge the position of the United States, believes Yannis Stivachtis, an expert in international security from Virginia Tech University. He spoke, in an exclusive interview for Antena 3 CNN, about the plans that the Washington administration has regarding everything that is happening on our continent. 

CBS News - Serious injuries reported from Delta plane crash in Toronto - Some of the passengers and crewmembers who survived the Toronto Pearson International Airport Delta plane crash suffered serious injuries during the crash landing, officials revealed during an update on Canada's ongoing investigation. CBS News' Tom Hanson reports, and Ella Atkins, a professor of aerospace and ocean engineering at Virginia Tech, weighs in on the latest plane-related incident.

ABC News - How did every passenger walk out of a fiery Delta plane crash in Toronto? - "If you are actually experiencing such a hard impact that you know the plane is crashing, which would have been the case here, then you would want it [the wing] to snap off, because the alternative is that your fuselage would have been structurally the weakest point, in which case it would have crunched and torsioned," explained Ella Atkins, a Virginia Tech aerospace professor.

Washington Post - What caused the crash at Toronto airport? Investigators are searching. - “You see a normal aircraft approach. You hear normal air traffic control interactions,” said Ella Atkins, head of the aerospace and ocean engineering department at Virginia Tech. “The first sign to everybody else, at least, that something was going wrong was when it touched down.” She said one big question will be what the winds were as the plane was landing: “Did they hit a really big gust that kind of caused them to have trouble controlling the aircraft as they touched down?”

Associated Press - Questions emerge about what may have caused Delta plane to burst into flames and flip over - “It appears from the video that the plane landed so hard that the right main gear collapsed. The tail and right wing began skidding causing the plane to roll over to the right,” Ella Atkins, the head of Virginia Tech’s aerospace and ocean engineering department and a pilot.

Business Insider - Data centers have an answer to fossil fuel emissions: Bury them - Researchers at Virginia Tech are currently conducting a feasibility study on industrial carbon capture in the region, funded by the US Department of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

Business Insider - The best litter box furniture for a hidden enclosure - This is good for your cat because two exit points can help keep your cat from feeling trapped in the confined space and offer a quick escape if they're being ambushed by another furry family member, says Dr. Mark Freeman, a veterinarian and assistant professor of community practice at the Virginia Tech Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.

Axios - NIH cuts could cost Virginia research universities millions in funding - Virginia Tech would lose $13 million a year, Virginia Tech president Tim Sands wrote.

ScienceAlert - We've Been Misreading a Major Law of Physics For Almost 300 Years - Virginia Tech philosopher Daniel Hoek wanted to "set the record straight" after discovering what he describes as a "clumsy mistranslation" in the original 1729 English translation of Newton's Latin Principia. 

Associated Press - Nikki Giovanni receives a posthumous honor, the Frost Medal for lifetime achievement - Two months after her death, poet Nikki Giovanni has been awarded one of the top honors for her art form, the Frost Medal for lifetime achievement. The Poetry Society of America said Wednesday that it had discussed giving the prize to Giovanni before her death. Giovanni died in December and is being honored posthumous.

Reuters - US will spend up to $1 billion to combat bird flu, USDA secretary says - Egg prices have nearly doubled since last year. Scant supply is leading some consumers to "panic buy," said Virginia Tech economist Jadrian Wooten in an email.

National Geographic - Winter brings more air pollution inside. Here’s how to minimize your risks. - “In winter when air is dry, the water evaporates quickly but whatever particles were in the water remains,” says Andrea Dietrich, as an environmental and water engineer at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, who has extensively studied the issue. 

Epoch Times - Why Aren't Chicken Meat Prices Rising Like Egg Prices? - From a purely economic perspective, Jadrian Wooten, collegiate associate professor at Virginia Tech’s Department of Economics, said the relative stability of chicken meat prices during the HPAI crisis speaks to the elasticity of the U.S. chicken supply.

Interesting Engineering - Waggle wars: Honeybees’ dance moves boost food hunts for the hive — Study - Fascinating and mesmerizing, honey bees talk to one another by dancing, but it doesn’t always work, according to a new study from Virginia Tech. Known as the “waggle” dance, the duration and direction of their buzzy routine convey “foraging instructions” to their fellow bees as to where to go and how far it is. They pass on information to one another in a jubilee. It is their excitement that inspires their nestmates to leave the nest.

Southern Living - Here’s How To Help Eastern Kentucky Following Catastrophic Flooding - Holler to Holler is a project that was started by students and faculty of Appalachian studies at Virginia Tech in 2022 in the wake of another outbreak of devastating flooding that affected 12 counties in eastern Kentucky. A few months after that disaster struck, students and faculty traveled to Kentucky with supplies. In the wake of last week’s storms they have created a resource hub on their Facebook page to provide up to date, on the ground efforts to help.