Further Together the ORAU Podcast

September is National Preparedness Month. What better time to talk about EM360, ORAU’s comprehensive emergency preparedness platform designed to help organizations manage the full cycle of preparedness activities in one place—from planning and exercise development to evaluation, corrective action tracking and continuous improvement. In this episode, Mary Connelly, ORAU manager of emergency management, discusses how EM360 can help any organization streamline the work of conducting emergency exercises without adding administrative burden. To learn more about EM360 or to request a demonstration, visit https://www.orau.org/technology-products/emergency-manager-360.html

Maggie Weng, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow, studies how life survives in super salty environments. She says one of her favorite things about doing this research is going to extreme environments to take samples from places on earth that exhibit the kinds of conditions that we're interested in studying. Those samples serve as analogs for what conditions might be like on other worlds or might have been like in the past. For example, Mars used to have a warmer and wetter climate, so she can study places on earth that might have resembled ancient Mars. To learn more about the...

People travel from all over the country to run the Secret City Half Marathon and 5K, a cool-weather race that starts on the waterfront at Melton Hill Lake and takes runners and walkers through the scenic streets of Oak Ridge. ORAU has been a proud sponsor of the Secret City races for many years. In this episode, host Michael Holtz is joined by fellow communications colleague and unofficial race ambassador Bryan Campbell and race director Hannah Fatheree for a conversation about the race, including talk about the course, how to train for a half marathon, the great organization that benefits...

Rural, underserved and minority populations are often not included or not represented in clinical and scientific research. Youssef Roman, PharmD, Ph.D., created the Community Advocacy and Research Empowerment (CARE) Coalition to change that. Youssef received an ORAU Innovation Partnership Grant while at Idaho State University to create the coalition, which brings together stakeholders committed to including rural, underserved and minority populations in research. Youssef hopes to replicate the CARE Coalition in Arizona where he is associate professor of Pharmacy Practice and Science at the University of Arizona R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy and a clinical pharmacy specialist at...

Vit Ruzicka, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow who works with hyperspectral satellite images to detect methane signatures in the atmosphere. Methane is a transparent gas that cannot be seen by the human eye but hyperspectral satellites, along with machine learning models, can help determine if there are leaks in facilities or pipelines that store methane. Because methane is a greenhouse gas, detecting large emissions is important. In addition to his research focus, Ruzicka shares his journey from the Czech Republic to the United Kingdom to the United States, and how working for NASA was dream that became...

The United States is facing a rural health crisis that includes a shortage of healthcare workers, challenges in access to women’s health services and mental health services, and preparedness limitations in the event of a public health crisis. ORAU is hosting a workshop on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, to launch a Rural Health Research Innovation Cluster (RIC). The RIC will bring together members of ORAU’s University Consortium to focus on solving the complex problems that impact rural health and resilience while also focusing on the federal government’s rural health priorities. Brenda Blunt, senior director of health and resiliency strategy, and Ca...

Tara Fetherolf, Ph.D. is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at the NASA Astrobiology Center at the University of California Riverside. Her research focuses on stellar variability, or how stars change with time. One example she uses is our sun. It has spots and it has storms. She studies those phenomena on other stars and how that affects other planets and their atmospheres, which she can compare to how similar activity affects earth. Fetherolf uses the example of the aurorae on Earth, which are beautiful and demonstrate the sun’s activity, but notes our sun is relatively quiet compared to ot...

Deborah L. Crawford, Ph.D., is chair of the ORAU Board of Directors. In her role, she has a front-row seat in shaping the future of the company. Crawford became chair as the selection of Meghan Millwood for president and CEO was being finalized, and has served on the board for eight years. In this episode of Further Together, Crawford talks to host Michael Holtz about her role as board chair, how she has seen ORAU flourish during her tenure on the board, and the exciting days that lie ahead for ORAU and all of Oak Ridge and region because...

Gabe Grell, Ph.D., is a self-described geek. He is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow focused on high-energy astrophysics, which involves observing some of the most powerful objects in the universe, including massive stars (10 to 20 times bigger than our sun), black holes, galaxies and supernovae, all of which emit very strong radiation in the form of X-rays. Grell analyzed the data received from satellites measuring these X-rays to deduce the atomic makeup and physical properties of those objects. Grell says he has always a math and science geek and began taking an interest in astronomy in high school. He majored in...

Veronika Jercic, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. She studies structures in the solar atmosphere known as prominences or filaments. Jercic calls them clouds on the sun. These clouds are important to understand stretch through all of sun’s atmospheric layers. Unlike the clouds on Earth, these clouds are much denser, so they're very heavy clouds and colder than the Corona in which they are situated. These clouds occasionally erupt, expelling huge masses of particles and energy into the interplanetary space, which see them as the Northern Lights. These energy masses can al...

Maurice Roots, Ph.D., was six years old when he watched “Star Trek” and decided to be a physicist. His dream came true and today he is an atmospheric physicist in the NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow researching atmospheric chemistry and dynamics at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Specifically, Roots focuses on ozone, which is one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s six critical pollutants. He says we need to measure and be concerned about ozone because of the health risks associated with how ozone impacts air quality and breathing it in, adding that ozone isn’t directly emitted from anything...

Oak Ridge is at the nexus of the nuclear energy renaissance. One of the challenges is meeting the demand for the necessary workforce, and not just the scientific and technical workforce but the skilled trades workers needed to build out and operate the small modular reactors and other facilities that are coming. On Thursday, May 14, ORAU is hosting the Pathway to Trades Summit, which will convene industry, trade unions, academia, government and other key players to begin to solve for meeting this important need. Laura Hammons, strategic programs and operations manager for the ORAU STEM Accelerator and key organizer of...

If you take anything away from this podcast episode, Naomi Asher wants you to know you are enough, you are worthy and you have value. In this episode of Further Together, Naomi and host Michael Holtz talk about career burnout, the need for rest and recovery, and finding yourself in the process. Naomi is the author of the book, “Take to the Bed (And Bring a Cake),” about the importance of giving yourself permission to rest when life gets overwhelming (and life gets overwhelming at times), evaluate whether what you do and how you present yourself to the world aligns with...

Ricardo Branco, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His research focuses on the development of detectors that can detect infrared or thermal radiation from very cold bodies throughout the solar system – think Uranus or the moon. Capturing the infrared radiation allows scientists to detect the chemical composition and other aspects of the body they are studying. Branco is a native of Brazil who has been interested in science since childhood. As a kid Branco wanted to be a doctor but fell in love with physics in high school. The rest, as they say, is hi...

Kirtan Dixit, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow in the second year of his fellowship at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He is part of the high-energy astrophysics, high-energy optics group on advances X-ray optics for future space telescopes. His research focuses on designing and fabricating multilayer mirror coating that can efficiently reflect hard X-rays. In this interview, he tells guest host Amber Davis that X-ray optical coatings are useful for focusing X-rays so that astrophysicists can make some sense out of it and can understand the underlying physics happening at high temperatures in the universe...

Greg Nichols is operations manager in the ORAU health studies program, but he wears a lot of hats. He has become an expert in artificial intelligence and received an ORAU Thought Leadership Research Award to write a chapter on the convergence of AI and biotechnology. Nichols’s chapter, “Assessing Governance and Regulatory Frameworks for Converging Technologies: The Case of Artificial Intelligence in Biological Engineering and Design Technologies,” appears in Biotechnology and AI: Technological Convergence and Information Hazards. He says that While biotechnologies are somewhat better regulated and monitored compared to other technologies, artificial intelligence is not, and the combination of these...

The annual Waste Management Symposia (March 8-12, 2026, in Phoenix, Arizona) is the premier international conference concerning the safe and secure management of radioactive wastes arising from nuclear operations, facility decommissioning and environmental remediation, as well as storage, transportation and disposal, and associated activities. A team of ORAU subject matter experts will be attending this year’s event. In this episode of Further Together, Kathy Rollow, senior director for Energy and International Strategy, and Chelsea Hill, manager of Workforce Solutions, discuss why Waste Management 2026 is an important opportunity for ORAU to share its capabilities with leading agencies, industries and experts in th...

Kelly Whalen, Ph.D., studies black holes and how they interact with galaxy growth as part of her research for the NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Whalen says there are a lot of misconceptions about black holes because of pop culture and science fiction depictions. There are different kinds of black holes, and they are not gigantic forces of destruction. She tells Further Together, The ORAU Podcast that black holes can also create by forming new stars. Whalen says being selected for the NASA NPP program is a dream come true and looks forward to continuing her research. The deadline for...

Stela Silva, Ph.D., an astrophysicist in the NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, has her eye to the sky, sort of. Working with gravitational microlensing, which she says is "the physical phenomenon that happens when we're observing a star and then another star with a planet passes in front of it," and machine learning she looks for signatures of exoplanets. The chance of finding a star is one in a million, Silva says, and she and her fellow researchers look at millions of stars at the same time trying to detect exoplanets. Silva grew up in Brazil, where NASA seemed as...

Myron Porter is a section manager in ORAU’s Technical Solutions Group, which is part of ITS. In his role, he is a software developer working as part of the team that maintains and supports U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science web applications for National Science Bowl, the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program and the Laboratory Equipment Donation Program (LDEP). Host Michael Holtz talked to Porter as part of a two-part series on the people making Black History at ORAU. Porter says he got hooked on technology when his family set up their first computer and used AO...

Rachel Hill, Ph.D., calls them angels: pastors, teachers, extended family members, neighbors who encourage us and cheer us on. The quiet encouragers who aren’t given and probably wouldn’t take credit for our successes. In honor of Black History Month, Further Together, the ORAU Podcast is featuring a two-part series of conversations with individuals making Black history at ORAU. For this episode, host Michael Holtz and special co-host Jill Latchana talk to Hill, an associate manager in STEM Workforce Development for ORISE, which is managed by ORAU for the U.S. Department of Energy. She discusses shift from acad...

Sara Howard, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist in the Health Studies group at ORAU who earned her doctoral degree in 2025. For part of her dissertation, she used machine learning techniques to analyze data from the National Supplemental Screening Program, which ORAU manages with several partners for the U.S. Department of Energy, to examine the link between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and occupational exposures. While we often think of COPD in the context of smoking, Howard wanted to look at the potential to be exposed to something other than smoking. Her dissertation, An Epidemiologic Study of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary...

Alka Rani, Ph.D., is a planetary scientist specializing in the geological and geophysical evolution of the moon and Mars. As a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at Marshall Space Flight Center, she investigates planetary interiors and surface processes through advanced geophysical and geochemical modeling. In this episode of Further Together, Rani discusses her interdisciplinary research and what it may mean for future NASA missions to Mars and beyond. The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented U.S. and non-U.S. scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a...

Welding isn’t just a skill; it’s a national security asset. That’s why ORAU launched Extreme Trades Makeover: Future Welders, a competition to give $30,000 in new welding equipment, upgrades or virtual equipment to three Alabama public high school educators. The competition deadline is January 30, 2026. In this episode of Further Together, host Michael Holtz talks to Jennifer Tyrell, Extreme Trades program manager, and Lindsay Cline from the U.S. Navy's Maritime Industrial Base Program Office about the need for welders, their earning potential, and their critical role in the country’s maritime industry. Learn more about Extreme Trades Makeover: Future W...

Lee Riedinger, Ph.D., knows the history of Oak Ridge and its connections to the University of Tennessee like he knows the back of his hand. His book, “Critical Connections: The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge from the Dawn of the Atomic Age to the Present,” explores the connections that exist between UT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORAU and other key stakeholders. In this episode of Further Together, Riedinger talks to hosts Michael Holtz and Amber Davis about ORAU’s role in the Oak Ridge story, including how ORNL may not have remained open were it not for the effort...

Luke Fountain, Ph.D., who is in the third year of his NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship, makes a return to Further Together because of a recently published paper he co-authored on plant biology and space exploration. His research focus is figuring out how to grow plants in space to help enable future deep exploration. In this conversation, Fountain shares the challenges of plant biology in space, including the need to make growing systems self-sustaining. The paper he co-authored, published in the New Phytologist in November 2025, lays out a 12-point framework called the Bioregenerative Life Support System readiness level to assist in...

Are black soldier flies the superheroes of the insect world? This episode of Further Together takes a dive into an ORAU-Directed Research and Development Grant-funded project led by Holly Holt, Ph.D., ORAU research specialist, who teamed up with Jeff Tomberlin, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Etymology at Texas A&M University and Charity Owings, Ph.D., research assistant professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at the University of Tennessee. Black soldier flies are said to be voracious decomposers, feeding off anything organic. As they feed, they convert organic waste into insect biomass that can...

Ultra-processed foods – think packaged snacks, frozen meals and hot dogs – have become dietary staples due to their convenience, affordability and aggressive marketing. However, these foods have low to no nutritional value and can contribute to significant health issues like obesity, diabetes, heart disease and colorectal cancer. In this episode of Further Together, three of ORAU’s subject matter experts – Diane Krause, Brenda Blunt and Jennifer Reynolds – talk about a recently published white paper on social listening and perceptions of ultra-processed foods. Improving diet quality is a critical goal of the Make America Healthy Again Agenda promulgated by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., U.S...

Molly Menzel, Ph.D., is an atmosphere scientist in the NASA Postdoctoral Program who conducts her research at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a smaller office under the umbrella of the Goddard Space Flight Center. When she started college, though, Menzel had no idea that she’d end up in her current fellowship. She was an engineering major focused on fluid dynamics and solid mechanics dynamics. During her graduate program she discovered atmospheric dynamics, which led to a focus on climate science. In this episode of Further Together, Menzel says her research doesn’t focus on day-to-day weather, but...

Behavioral health during cancer care is a critical issue. Anyone faced with a cancer diagnosis is faced with emotional, social, spiritual, familial and other issues. On top of that, for men in our society there is an expectation that vulnerability and asking for help is weakness. The non-profit organization Man Up to Cancer seeks to upend that expectation by helping men find social and emotional support from other men during their cancer journeys. MUTC has been successful at growing a community and gaining support from oncology community for its work, but no data exists to prove that peer-to-peer support for...

ORAU coordinates the evaluation of DOE former workers through the National Supplemental Screening Program. Through the NSSP, the U.S. Department of Energy offers free customized medical screenings to their former workers who may have been exposed to hazardous substances on the job site. On this episode of Further Together, host Michael Holtz and Wendy Benade, operations manager, and Heather O’Maonaigh, outreach manager, take a deep dive into the program, from outreach to enrollment and so much more. ORAU manages the program along with great partners, including National Jewish Health, Acuity International, Cority Software, and the Center for Health, Wo...

Aakash Chhabra, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Earth Science Division at NASA Ames. Chhabra's background is studying fires and forest ecology using satellite data or remote sensing data. He did his Ph.D. research in Australia on studying the effects of bushfires, he says, because it's a land shaped by fires. While writing his dissertation, he wrote down some ideas for future research. Then he learned about the NPP, contacted scientists at NASA and the rest, as they say, is history. In this episode of Further Together, Chhabra discusses his research and urges fellow scientists who...

Dray Gentry, a clinical physicist on ORAU’s radiation epidemiology team, is the primary investigator for an ORAU-Directed Research and Development Grant project that aims to determine the feasibility of using artificial intelligence to speed up the process of identifying chromosomal abnormalities in the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site Cytogenetic Biodosimetry Laboratory, which is part of the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education that ORAU manages for the U.S. Department of Energy. The second is to help determine the total dose cancer patients are exposed to during treatment. In this episode of Further Together, Gentry talks to ho...

ORAU is tackling one of the most pressing challenges of our time: food security. ORAU is seeking a partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to lead efforts to strengthen America’s food systems against emerging threats like supply chain disruptions and biological hazards. ORAU’s recently published white paper, Strengthening Regional Food System Resilience: A Framework for Risk Assessment and Emergency Preparedness outlines a transformative plan to address these challenges. This framework leverages ORAU’s interdisciplinary expertise, advanced modeling tools and stakeholder engagement to help USDA identify vulnerabilities and implement targeted interventions. In this conversation, hosts Michael Holtz...

Because of our strong capabilities in training and technical assistance, ORAU was contracted by the National Institutes of Health to develop a state-of-the-art training center for users of the Common Fund Data Ecosystem. This ecosystem is an infrastructure to make data from the NIH’s various programs easier to access with the aim of facilitating improved discovery, reuse, integration, and analyses of these datasets to form novel hypothesis for accelerating discoveries in biomedical research. In this episode of Further Together, Allissa Dillman, Ph.D., co-principal investigator and owner of BioData Sage LLC, and Jennifer Burnette, ORAU project director, talk to ho...

As a child in rural Appalachia, Rachel Harris spent her days in her father’s vegetable garden, playing with dinosaur figurines and dreaming of ancient worlds. Today, she’s part of a very different world, working behind the scenes at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., as a NASA Postdoctoral Management Program (NPMP) fellow. Harris, who holds a Ph.D. in geosciences with a focus on biogeochemistry and environmental microbiology, isn’t in a traditional lab or field site. Instead, she’s embedded in science management and policy, where NASA’s missions are carefully shaped and supported. In this episode of Further...

Luke Fountain, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow on the Space Crop Production Team at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The UK native's research focuses on on supplementing astronauts' diet with fresh food that is grown in space. "Eventually, we're hoping to replace calories. And as we transition to become more earth-independent, obviously, we want the astronauts to be able to supply, grow more of their own food, so we're less reliant on resupply," he said during his interview for Further Together. Fountain adds that growing plants in space is not easy, and that part of the challenge involves...

Bradley Gay, Ph.D., describes both his career and life paths as a “long-winding, topsy-turvy journey,” but the long road he took to get to the NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program was clearly worth it. Gay is a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he studies permafrost carbon feedback in Arctic tundra. In this episode of the Further Together: The ORAU Podcast, Gay talks about his research, why it is important, his career trajectory and more. He also highly recommends the NASA NPP program as a place for up-and-coming scientists to find their place. To learn more about NASA NPP, o...

Sanchita Pal, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow studying solar storms at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. In this episode of Further Together, Pal discusses the planetary impact of solar storms. “Earth has a magnetosphere, so that actually protects us from the heavy impact of these solar storms. But other planets like Mars and Venus, which do not have magnetospheres, are very much affected by these kinds of storms because they can lose their atmospheric mass, which is a huge field of study right now, as we are planning to go to Mars in the Artemis Mission.” Pal...

When Jim Sears retired from the U.S. Air Force after 33 years of service, friends and mentors told him he would miss two things: the people and the mission. Since joining ORAU as senior vice president a year ago, Sears says those are the things that keep him coming to work every day. That "has really been better than I could have expected for my first step on this second mountain of a journey," he said during a recent interview for Further Together: The ORAU Podcast. In this episode Sears discusses his career journey, the challenges and opportunities that lie...