September 2025 Inside the Institute Newsletter

Whether it be the international conference stage or a peer-reviewed journal or book chapter, “the audience is listening” to faculty affiliates in the Virginia Tech Fralin Life Sciences Institute - it is one of our key traits that make us distinct, but more important, it is what makes us distinctive.

I came to this conclusion while giving a keynote address to the University of Texas System Postdoctoral Associate Symposium a few weeks ago, where I had the opportunity to discuss what makes Virginia Tech and the FLSI different and valued within and from the outside.

While FLSI affiliates value our distinct collaborative environment and valuable scholarly activities, it is crucial to know that outcomes from the latter are important to our colleagues and the international community of researchers we engage with.

The articles and videos in this edition of the newsletter give us some glimpses into the importance and impact of the efforts of the entire FLSI organization – some 50+ employees and over 350 faculty affiliates strong.

But there is so much more that can be gleaned about the importance of our scholarly activities, namely, the words the FLSI community are writing in peer-reviewed publications and books.

To that point, between 2020 and 2024, the roughly 5,000 FLSI affiliate publications were cited almost 100,000 times – yielding a citation rate of 19.6 citations/publication that surpasses that of most of our aspirational peers.

These and numerous other outcomes from the hard work and creative thought of FLSI affiliates are making it clear that the life sciences arenas at Virginia Tech are thriving and have tremendous value to a broad audience.

Furthermore, those accomplishments and impact clearly demonstrate the return on investment that this investment institute is making on behalf of university leadership and the Commonwealth - it is evident our collective efforts are being listened to and are catalyzing university’s path toward global distinction.

 Let’s go Hokies, and let’s go FLSI!