VTechWorks
VTechWorks provides global access to Virginia Tech scholarship, including journal articles, books, theses, dissertations, conference papers, slide presentations, technical reports, working papers, administrative documents, videos, images, and more by faculty, students, and staff. Faculty can deposit items to VTechWorks from Elements, including journal articles covered by the University open access policy. Email vtechworks@vt.edu for help.
Open Access Policy
Virginia Tech's open access policy enables researchers to deposit the accepted version of scholarly articles with no embargo.
Theses and Dissertations
Virginia Tech was first in the world to require ETDs in 1997, and continues to add scans of older theses and dissertations.
Open Textbooks
More than 50 freely available and openly licensed textbooks are among our most downloaded items.
Communities in VTechWorks
Select a community to browse its collections.
Recent Submissions
Translational Plant Sciences Center: Rooted in Discovery 2026
Bauguess, Tyler; Bass, Jordan; Esterhuizen, Max; Jacques, Jenise; M. Pruitt, Suzanne; Spencer, Felicia (Virginia Tech, 2026-02-19)
Evaluating CS1-LLM: Integrating LLMs and Examining Student Outcomes in an Introductory Computer Science Course
Vadaparty, Annapurna; Smith, David H. IV; Srinath, Samvrit; Padala, Mounika; Alvarado, Christine; Gorson Benario, Jamie; Porter, Leo; Zingaro, Daniel (ACM, 2026-02-09)
Large language models (LLMs) have broad implications for education in general, impacting the foundations of what we teach and how we assess. This is especially true in computing, where LLMs tuned for coding have demonstrated shockingly good performance on the types of assignments historically used in introductory CS (CS1) courses. As a result, CS1 courses will need to change in terms of the skills that are taught and how they are assessed. Computing education researchers have begun to study student use of LLMs, but there remains much to be understood about the ways that these tools affect student outcomes. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a new CS1 course at a large research-intensive university that integrates the use of LLMs for student learning. We describe the design principles used to create our course, our new course objectives, and evaluation of student outcomes and perceptions throughout the course as measured by assessment scores and surveys. Our findings suggest that 1) student exam performance outcomes, including differences among demographic groups, are largely similar to historical outcomes for courses without integration of LLM tools, 2) large, open-ended projects may be particularly valuable in an LLM context, and 3) students predominantly found the LLM tools helpful, although some had concerns regarding overreliance on the tools.
Real-Time Hand Pose Tracking using 6-Axis IMUs
Sarker, Anik; Kou, Ziyi; Ristani, Ergys; Guan, Li; Niehues, Taylor (ACM, 2026-03-16)
We introduce a real-time system for tracking hand pose using 6- axis inertial measurement units (IMUs) without requiring magnetometers or external sensors. Accurate hand pose tracking with only 6-axis IMUs is known to be fundamentally challenging due to the absence of a shared heading reference, leading to severe drift and inter-sensor misalignment. To overcome these limitations, we propose a hybrid method that combines a learning-based pose estimation approach followed by a late-stage Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The learning-based model estimates noisy yet reasonable hand poses and is trained with drift-insensitive features like gravity vectors and wrist-relative gyroscope signals. On the other hand the EKF can appropriately filter the noise from pose estimates leading to robust tracking. Evaluated on a 12-hour dataset spanning 23 interaction tasks across 10 participants, our system improves joint angle accuracy by 40% over an EKF-only baseline and by 18% over a learning-only approach, achieving a mean joint error below 10°. The resulting framework enables real-time hand tracking invariant to magnetic perturbations, occlusion, or lighting changes, and is well suited for robotics, human–robot interaction (HRI), and human-computer interaction (HCI) applications.
Sublethal Glyphosate Exposure Reduces Honey Bee Foraging and Alters Balance of Biogenic Amines in the Brain
McHenry, Laura C.; Schürch, Roger; Council-Troche, McAlister; Gross, Aaron D.; Johnson, Lindsay E.; Ohlinger, Bradley D.; Couvillon, Margaret J. (Company of Biologists, 2025-05-06)
Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide that inhibits the shikimate pathway, which honey bees (Apis mellifera), a non-target beneficial pollinator, do not endogenously express. Nonetheless, sublethal glyphosate exposure in honey bees has been correlated to impairments in gustation, learning, memory and navigation. While these impacted physiologies underpin honey bee foraging and recruitment, the effects of sublethal glyphosate exposure on these important behaviors remain unclear, and any proximate mechanism of action in the honey bee is poorly understood. We trained cohorts of honey bees from the same hives to forage at one of two artificial feeders offering 1 mol l−1 sucrose solution, either unaltered (N=40) or containing glyphosate at 5 mg acid equivalent (a.e.) l−1 (N=46). We then compared key foraging behaviors and, on a smaller subset of bees, recruitment behaviors. Next, we quantified protein levels of octopamine, tyramine and dopamine, and levels of the amino acid precursor tyrosine in the brains of experimental bees collected 3 days after the exposure. We found that glyphosate treatment bees reduced their foraging by 13.4% (P=0.022), and the brain content of tyramine was modulated by a crossover interaction between glyphosate treatment and the number of feeder visits (P=0.004). Levels of octopamine were significantly correlated with its precursors tyramine (P=0.011) and tyrosine (P=0.018) in glyphosate treatment bees, but not in control bees. Our findings emphasize the critical need to investigate impacts of the world’s most-applied herbicide and to elucidate its non-target mechanism of action in insects to create better-informed pollinator protection strategies.
Exploring Experiences of Applying to US-Based Medical Schools from a Neurodivergent Viewpoint: An Interpretive Phenomenological Study
Steele, Rebecca (Virginia Tech, 2026-04-06)
Despite the growing recognition of neurodiversity in higher education, neurodivergent (ND) individuals are significantly underrepresented in U.S. medical education (AAMC Medical School Graduation Questionnaire, 2021). This gap reflects not only the limitations of individual disclosure decisions but also how historically entrenched ableist admissions structures privilege neurotypical norms of communication, professionalism, and productivity. This study examined how ND medical school applicants and students experience admission as processes that function as gatekeeping and deny their different ways of being and knowing, resulting in a lack of recognition for their belonging in medicine. The research questions focused on how ND applicants and students experience medical school admissions in the U.S. and how these experiences inform future strategies to empower emerging scholars in medicine.
This study centered the lived experience of ND medical student applicants and students using an interpretive phenomenological approach (van Manen, 2016). I used semi-structured interviews to gain insights on how participants made meaning of neurodivergence during the admissions process, with attention to institutional norms, interpersonal interactions, and broader cultural expectations within medical education. Using inductive data analysis (Adams, 2015) of interview transcripts, findings revealed how barriers to access and belonging are primarily systemic rather than individual. Participants described key obstacles such as rigid evaluative metrics, implicit behavioral expectations of normativity, and institutional cultures that conflate professionalism with neurotypicality. These conditions often required applicants to manage, minimize, or conceal aspects of their neurodivergence to give the perception of themselves as legitimate applicants. At the same time, participants named how their ND is a source of clinical strength, as they think of themselves as individuals with enhanced empathy, pattern recognition, and novel problem-solving, challenging deficit-oriented assumptions, traits not easily recognized through admissions process.
This study reframes medical school admissions as a relational and boundary-crossing process, where difference is actively negotiated rather than passively assessed. By situating ND experiences within historical and structural contexts, findings highlight the limitations of accommodation-only approaches and underscore the need for institutional accountability in fostering inclusion. Future research should attend to the development of admissions frameworks that value cognitive diversity as a scholarly and clinical asset, training admissions committees to recognize non-normative excellence, and advancing research that positions ND scholars as leaders in shaping the future of medical education. Empowering the next generation of scholars requires moving beyond access toward systemic transformation that recognizes difference as a source of innovation and growth within medicine.