Looking ahead to 2024 headlines in the news, Virginia Tech has the following experts available for interviews to help with your reporting. To schedule an interview with any of our experts, email mediarelations@vt.edu.

Inflation and unemployment rates

We’ll likely see a persistent decline in inflation rates, gradually returning to pre-pandemic levels, says Virginia Tech economist Jadrian Wooten. Interest rates play a big role in this. Wooten is a collegiate associate professor with the Department of Economics at Virginia Tech’s College of Science. He also writes a weekly blog on economics issues, Monday Morning Economist. Read more about him here.

Presidential primaries & November election
With Donald Trump in a commanding position to secure the Republican presidential nomination, Virginia Tech political experts Caitlin Jewitt and Karen Hult can talk about what issues are expected to dominate the likely Biden/Trump rematch. Those included pending court cases involving former Trump, immigration and the southern border, national security concerns in the Middle East, Ukraine, China, domestic policy issues (i.e. election access, reproductive rights, climate change, education, income inequality).

Climate change
2023 was the warmest year on record globally and Virginia Tech meteorologist Stephanie Zick says she expects to see record warmth continue into 2024.  

Environmental security expert Manoochehr Shirzaei says the rising temperatures will lead to the increased demand for water, which can result in excessive groundwater extraction and lead to land subsidence, or sinking land.

Urban climate and planning expert Theo Lim says increased temperatures are the most direct impact of global climate change. His research shows that this affects people in already marginalized neighborhoods. For instance, Lim says poorer neighborhoods of color in cities can be 15 degrees warmer than wealthier, white areas.

Artificial Intelligence and innovation
Rapid moving advances in artificial intelligence have raised enticing prospects for supercharged technological innovation. Researchers at Virginia Tech are exploring these frontiers and can offer previews of the potential positive developments that could derive from AI.  

Walid Saad, a professor of electrical and computer engineering based at the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria, enthuses about the next steps in the evolution of AI and how it could intersect with forthcoming 6G wireless systems.  

Ella Atkins, director of the Virginia Tech Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, says machine learning can help make autonomous vehicles, in air and space, or ground and sea, safer through self-monitoring diagnostics and prognostics. Maintenance and repair operations for aircraft have been revolutionized with this technology.  

Dylan Losey, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering with a specialization in robotics, is focused on the fundamentals of human-robot interaction and researching assistive technology, such as wheelchair mounted robot arms.  

Ali Shojaei with Virginia Tech’s Myers-Lawson School of Construction wants to revolutionize construction industries through digital innovations. In construction, he says that AI-driven automation and robotics can significantly speed up the construction process and also reduce human error.

Public health and transmission of viruses
One clear lesson learned from COVID-19 is that the health of one person on the planet has an impact on the health of everyone else. It takes a single person getting on a flight from the other side of the world, bringing with them whatever they have been unfortunate enough to contract. 

Today we are facing public health concerns of a ‘tripledemic’ with respiratory infections on the rise. Flu, COVID-19, and RSV are spiking in the mid-winter months. Lisa M. Lee, a professor of public health at Virginia Tech, is an epidemiologist and bioethicist who has worked in public health and ethics for 30 years, including 14 years with CDC. Her expertise on contact tracing, public health surveillance, ethics, and other topics related to infectious diseases became highly sought after by members of the media reporting on COVID-19.  

Crisis in the Middle East
The Israel–Hamas war has no immediate end in sight. Middle East foreign policy experts Joel Peters and Ariel Ahram with the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs are keeping up with developments in this crisis.

Total eclipse on April 8
On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will begin over the South Pacific Ocean and cross North America, passing over Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Experts who can discuss the eclipse and other space-related phenomena include Mike Ruohoniemi and Scott England, both engineers and collaborators on NASA-connected projects, and astrophysics professor Nahum Arav, who studies the influence of black holes.

Driverless tech
A traffic stop is typically a moment of heightened awareness for law enforcement officers and the driver. But what happens when a vehicle that just came to a halt has no driver? This is just one of numerous autonomous vehicle scenarios that the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) researchers have been helping to solve. VTTI has become one of the premier university-level transportation institutes in the U.S. and is home to the largest group of transportation safety researchers in the world. Its world-class facilities provide a research- and automation-friendly environment that government agencies, manufacturers, and suppliers use to advance vehicles and infrastructure to increase safety and reduce environmental impacts.

Science behind ultra-processed foods
Scientific consensus is building around a clear recommendation: To improve health, we need to think differently about our diet of ultra-processed foods. Processed foods have become a growing part of the American diet as manufacturers work to produce inexpensive, convenient foods with a long shelf life. Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, an assistant professor with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and associate director of the research institute's Center for Health Behaviors Research, is a neuroscientist who studies how the brain integrates peripheral signals to guide food selection and eating behaviors. Using multimodal brain imaging and metabolic measures, her laboratory in Roanoke studies food motivation to ask new questions about diet, food choice, and addiction.

Future of farming
Robin White, an associate professor in the School of Animal Sciences says pressures like the growing global population and changing climate will dramatically influence where and how we farm. She says that due to the regional nature of climate and population shifts, the technologies and interventions that are successful in future farming systems are unlikely to be homogenous – what is ideal or successful in one region might not be in another region. White explains that future farms also have unprecedented economic and social uncertainties to deal with, and will have to simultaneously work to adapt to population growth, climate change, market variability, and shifting consumer preferences and acceptance.

More information from these experts can be found here.

Schedule an interview

To secure an interview with any of our experts, email mediarelations@vt.edu.  

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