May 2025 Inside the Institute Newsletter
A Message from Rob McCarley
Executive Director, The Fralin Life Sciences Institute
Those who successfully navigated commencement ceremonies, torrential downpours, and last-minute changes of late are a resilient lot. So are our Institute affiliates as they face straight-on the unexpected challenges regarding the current funding landscape and the changing environment of higher education.
Resilience—the ability to respond to unexpected events and create an alternative path to a “new version of success”—often comes from within. Those internal capabilities result from prior experiences and the lessons learned, coupled with careful discernment about strategies and an unflinching commitment to be a force for positive change.
I have learned a lot from our affiliates about mechanisms to leverage their resilience and increase the depth of single discipline and scope of interdisciplinary scholarly activities. These creative mechanisms are allowing them to advance Global Distinction efforts, even while facing the great uncertainty we are all experiencing.
Many of those approaches align with priorities of the Institute and the Office of Research and Innovation, such as investing in: key infrastructure; approaches enabling integration of research expertise for synergistic outcomes; and mechanisms for elevating awareness of the impact of scholarly and research activities by FLSI affiliates. While there are ORI resources for new funding possibilities, including partnerships with industry, as well as FLSI funding opportunities, those are just the starting points for creating the best environment for faculty to feel supported in their research and scholarly activities.
To that end, the FLSI is launching the Executive Director’s Initiative for Research Resilience (EDIRR) on July 1. The EDIRR is focused on certain life sciences awards, which have been terminated by an agency and selected by Virginia Tech senior management for consideration. In addition, the Institute is exploring pathways for facilitating the pivoting of affiliate research to new areas aligned with funding priorities of a variety of entities. Stay tuned for more information on the research pivoting program.
The stories in this newsletter reflect amazing outcomes from the wisdom, commitment, and efforts of the FLSI community. From the impressive accomplishments of 2025 graduates, inaugural awards to faculty affiliates, to the recognition of outcomes with innovation, your hard work is yielding results that provide additional evidence for the need of the FLSI and Virginia Tech to further support and grow those endeavors. As encapsulated by some of our affiliates’ highlighted research with bacteriophages and drug-resistant bacteria, your successes result from the resilience that comes from within to yield distinctive outcomes with global impact!
Let’s go Hokies, and let’s go FLSI!
Around the Institute and Affiliated Centers
Graduate School recognizes faculty and students
Congratulations to our master’s and doctoral degree students and faculty mentor who were recently recognized at the Virginia Tech Graduate School annual awards reception.
Birgit Scharf, professor of biological sciences and Translational Plant Sciences Center affiliated faculty, was honored as Outstanding Faculty Mentor for the Virginia Tech College of Science.
Here are just some of her notable accomplishments:
- Mentored a total of 16 graduate students, 4 postdocs and 50 undergraduate students (with 25 of these pursuing graduate studies)
- Published 84 peer-reviewed publications, 4 reviews and 3 book chapters
- Recipient of numerous grants including an NSF Career Award, Jeffress Memorial Trust and a Virginia Tech College of Science Dean's Discovery Award
Michelle Theus and Quinn Thomas receive Frontier Awards
The Office of Research and Innovation's inaugural Frontier Awards recognize exceptional scholarly achievement for mid-career faculty with the potential to build on established research to advance knowledge and innovation.
>>Read more.
Virginia Tech faculty were recognized for their scholarship and ingenuity at Innovation and Partnerships’ fourth annual Celebrating Innovation event on April 28.
The award recognizes inventors who are advancing game-changing technologies that are or hold the potential to make a significant human impact.
- Kevin Edgar, professor of sustainable biomaterials, has a proven track record of commercializing innovation, with over 20 technology disclosures to Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties. He has helped numerous students to transition innovations into internships and successful careers in the field.
Bryan Hsu, assistant professor of biological sciences, has developed multiple technologies in his lab that have attracted strong commercial interest and is actively working toward launching a start-up. >>Read more
