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
Surgery Markets in Trans-it: Construction of the Gender Affirming Surgery Market
Frommer, Stephen Lyndon (Virginia Tech, 2026-11-04)
Gender affirming surgeries are often denied, delayed, or covered only under paternalistic and pathologizing conditions. Meanwhile, comparable procedures such as breast reconstruction after mastectomy for cis women are covered due to constructions of the natural and normative. This dissertation asks how trans* people value gender affirming surgeries, what role they play in the valuation process, and how recognizing their agency in that process actively improves care. Reading trans* medicine through both biopolitics and economic sociology, it argues that the value of gender affirming care is not inherent but constructed — through the moral and cultural work of the courts, clinics, insurers, and markets that have long treated trans* embodiment as a disorder to correct. Drawing on 76 U.S. court cases (1975–2016), analysis of medical and institutional documents, and interviews with 13 trans* masculine people who pursued top surgery, this project sets out to show that biopower and economic valuation reproduce one another, and that trans* people themselves must define any just account of gender affirming care through support and connection, not correction and cure.
2026 Schnabel Engineering Lecture: Bayesian Thinking in Geo-Engineering
Baecher, Gregory B. (Virginia Tech, 2026-10-13)
The statistics you took in college is mostly worthless in geotechnical practice, but that is probably not a surprise. ‘Classical’ statistics doesn’t address the uncertainties that geotechnical engineers actually deal with, which are mostly epistemic: limited knowledge, changed site conditions, approximate models, too few data, and engineering judgment. The good news is that Bayesian Thinking provides a method for dealing with these epistemic uncertainties, and most geotechnical engineers are intuitively Bayesian so the approach is easily applied in practice. Project examples arising in site characterization, dam safety, systems risk analysis, and reliability will be discussed, along with the emblematic observational approach of Terzaghi which is a purely Bayesian concept.
Visual Accessibility Simulation: Pedagogical framework, computational methods, and implementation of a browser-based design tool
Tural, Mehmedalp (2026-10-30)
The design of interior environments influences the visual information available to people with low vision and, consequently, how they perceive, interpret, and navigate their surroundings. Understanding these relationships is important in interior design education, where students can examine how their decisions about spatial configuration, materials, and lighting may affect visual accessibility. Visual Accessibility Simulation is a browser-based educational platform developed with support from Virginia Tech's TLOS Technology-Enhanced Learning Grant. It combines explanatory resources, sample photographs, and an interactive simulator that accepts photographs and design renderings. An Empathetic Design Cycle connects image preparation and simulation with observation, documentation, discussion, and design revision. Browser access allows students to revisit these activities independently and at their own pace, alongside instructor-led studio work. This report presents the platform's pedagogical foundation, computational pipeline, and implementation. The methods include image resizing, field-of-view estimation, angular scaling, Gaussian and two-band acuity approximations, color adjustments, and condition-associated masks. The equations describe the browser's image transformations and distinguish them from the contrast-sensitivity methods that informed development. The report also identifies limits associated with image inputs, working resolution, parameter interpretation, and image-fixed representations of field loss. Examples from the website's sample library illustrate how students can connect changes in visual information to specific design questions. The platform supports reflective design inquiry rather than clinical assessment or photometric measurement. It gives students a way to examine visual information in their projects, explain why particular features matter, and justify proposed design responses
Assessing Healthy and Traditional Foods in Virginia Tribal Communities: Barriers and Facilitators from Lived Experiences
Powell, Tia (Virginia Tech, 2026-11-03)
Indigenous communities experience disproportionate rates of food insecurity, nutrition-related chronic diseases, and barriers to accessing both healthy and traditional foods. While these disparities have been well documented nationally, limited research has explored the unique experiences of Virginia’s Indigenous communities and how Virginia Cooperative Extension can support those communities. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the barriers and facilitators to accessing healthy and traditional foods through the lived experiences and stories of Indigenous community members in Virginia. Data collected through semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify common experiences, patterns, and emerging themes related to barriers and facilitators to access healthy and traditional foods. Participants identified barriers when accessing healthy and traditional foods, including rural food deserts, limited transportation, rising food costs, aging and physical limitations, historical loss of land, reduced opportunities for hunting, fishing, gardening, and food preservation, and the erosion of traditional ecological knowledge across generations. Participants also highlighted significant community strengths and facilitators to health and traditional food access, including strong family and community relationships, cultural revitalization efforts, community gardens, food forests, traditional food education, seed saving, food preservation, youth engagement, and collaborative partnerships with organizations such as Virginia Cooperative Extension. The findings demonstrate that Indigenous food sovereignty extends beyond food security to encompass cultural identity, self-determination, stewardship of ancestral knowledge, and community well-being. Based on the findings, recommendations are provided for culturally responsive nutrition education, community-engaged Cooperative Extension programming, and future partnerships that support Indigenous food sovereignty and improve access to healthy and traditional foods. By centering Indigenous voices and lived experiences, this research contributes to a growing body of knowledge that can inform public health practice, Extension programming, and policies that honor tribal priorities while promoting health equity.
The Presence and Bioactivity of Connexin-43 and Pannexin-1 in Milk-Derived Small Extracellular Vesicles
Amin, Md Ruhul (Virginia Tech, 2026-11-02)
Milk-derived small extracellular vesicles (mEVs) are an emerging platform for oral delivery of peptide therapeutics, but their potential as both an engineerable delivery vehicle and a naturally bioactive agent in their own right remains incompletely understood. This dissertation investigates the presence, delivery utility, and endogenous bioactivity of two channel-forming membrane proteins, Connexin 43 (Cx43) and Pannexin-1 (Panx1), in bovine mEVs, and tests the premise that channel-protein cargo defines functionally distinct, bioactive subpopulations within an otherwise heterogeneous mEV pool.
First, Pannexin-1 and Cx43 are shown to be present in a defined subpopulation of bovine mEVs, using western blotting, single-molecule localization microscopy, and flow cytometry-based single-vesicle detection, demonstrating mEV cargo heterogeneity. Secondly, an esterification-based strategy is developed for loading the Cx43 mimetic peptide αCT11 into mEVs. Orally administered, αCT11-loaded mEVs reduced infarct size by approximately 60% and preserved cardiac function in a murine model of ischemia-reperfusion injury, with efficacy retained when treatment was delayed by up to two hours after reperfusion. Finally, returning to the native, unloaded mEV population, a subpopulation intrinsically enriched in endogenous Cx43 is isolated using collagen-binding capacity as an indirect, function-based isolation strategy. This subpopulation was enriched approximately 22-fold in Cx43 relative to the unselected mEV pool and conferred significant radioprotection in a normal mammary epithelial cell model, exceeding that of unselected mEVs.
Together, these findings establish milk EVs as both a natural signaling reservoir, whose bioactivity is concentrated in cargo-defined subpopulations, and an engineerable oral delivery platform for Cx43-targeted peptide therapeutics. This dissertation further establishes collagen-affinity selection as a generalizable, peptide-free strategy for isolating functionally defined extracellular vesicle subpopulations that lack a directly targetable surface marker, with potential applications extending beyond this specific system.