Nutshell Games come to Alexandria with focus on Pandemic Science

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research 1:49 Nutshell Games come to Alexandria with focus on Pandemic Science

By:

Craig Newcomb

7 Aug 2025 304

The Virginia Tech-led National Science Foundation Center for Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies (NSF COMPASS Center) and Virginia Tech’s Center for Communicating Science hosted the first ever Pandemic Science in a Nutshell Games. Participants were challenged with presenting their pandemic science research or related topic to an audience and panel of judges in just 90 seconds. The fast-paced presentation competition took place inside the Boeing Auditorium at Virginia Tech’s Academic Building One in Alexandria.

We have folks that study the most interesting things. And when they talk to each other, people like me cannot understand them. We've learned how to communicate with the public, which is not what I do most of the time. Usually I'm communicating with scientists or students. And so they taught us how to relate with the audience, how to talk about our research with a broad public audience. And so tonight was about practicing those skills that we've learned over the last several months. NSF Compost Center is a research center funded by the National Science Foundation to support research on pandemic prediction and prevention. One of the key efforts of this center is to train scientists in communicating science with the general public. Each one of us who participated was trying to give a 90-second capsule of what their interested in, what their focus and research is, what drives them in a way that is accessible to the general public. Our winner for the entire event, our favorite of the judges as a whole, was Krista Wigginson. How the virus is... Shelly is her name, so this is the prize I got for my presentation. I get to keep her from one year and then next year she comes back and she gets passed on to the next to the next winner. It was really rewarding. I feel like I've learned new skills that now I can use in the classroom or when I talk to like my relatives or people that don't know what I do, it was a very fulfilling experience.