Lily Farabaugh 
Our manuscript, “VILLA: Versatile Information Retrieval From Scientific Literature Using Large LAnguage Models,” has been accepted to the KDD 2026 Conference (AI for Sciences track). The 2026 conference will take place August 9–13, 2026 in Jeju, Korea.
Hannah Brown, an NSF COMPASS postdoctoral researcher at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech, has been appointed to serve a two-year term on the Journal Club Panel of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The following story was written in Fall 2025 by Kylor Chou in ENGL 4824: Science Writing as part of a collaboration among the English department, the Center for Communicating Science, and the NSF COMPASS Center.
We’re proud to see one of our students, Lauren Tucker, featured in Virginia Tech News, for her work in translating public health research into accessible, community-focused communication. Through her involvement with the COMPASS Center and Center for Communicating Science at Virginia Tech, Lauren has contributed to a wide range of initiatives aimed at making science more accessible and engaging.
NSF COMPASS member Hannah Brown presented her research on hepatitis E, a zoonotic virus that can spread from animals to humans, at Science on Tap, a monthly event held at Rising Silo Brewery. The series is sponsored and supported by the Center for Communicating Science and Virginia Tech’s chapter of Sigma Xi.
NSF COMPASS Center members from Cornell University analyze 60 years of feline parvovirus alongside canine parvovirus, shedding light on how viruses move between animal hosts and supporting efforts to predict emerging threats.
NSF COMPASS announces the selected students for the 2026 Undergraduate Summer Internship Program.
What happens when you turn a science fair upside down? At Virginia Tech’s Science Festival last fall, the U.S. National Science Foundation COMPASS Center (Center for COMmunity Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to SocietieS) and the Center for Communicating Science partnered to bring “Flip the Fair” to life on the third floor balcony of the Center for the Arts.
Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine postdoctoral fellow Zohreh Gholizadeh-Siahmazgi uses induced pluripotent stem cell technology to create mini versions of organs. Her research is described in this story by Virginia Tech student Eli Speechley.
Yian Yin, Cornell assistant professor and NSF COMPASS co-investigator, explores how large language models are reshaping scientific production in a new paper published in Science.