Episodes

We celebrate mentorship in this episode of the ORISE Featurecast in a conversation with Lindsey Perkin, Ph.D, research molecular biologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service. Perkins’s unit focuses on insect pests of cotton and other row crops. She says mentors can make or break a student's experience in a lab or other opportunity. It’s important to guide people in the right way, to give them that good experience. If they have a bad experience, that might complet...

Hampton Kennedy was between jobs when he came across an opportunity for the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service Research Participation Program Fellowship. The fellowship blended history – Hampton is a history teacher – and ecology in that it focused on the history of signal crayfish in Montana. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, Hampton talks about the process of investigating the history of signal crayfish. Few studies had been done prior to this project, but determini...

Beth Ellinport is an ORISE research program participant at the US Army Corps of Engineer's Engineer Research and Development Center Environmental Laboratory, where her research helps drive data-driven decision-making under uncertainty. We think of the Army Corps of Engineers in relation to dredging waterways and building levies, locks and dams but there is much to consider for those projects and others, including impacts on downstream communities, employees and search-and-rescue crews. Ellinport...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is something most people interact with every day, even if they don’t realize it. Maps apps, the predictive text you see when you’re writing an email or document, or the ad you get served on social media because you searched the web for something. While useful in our daily lives, AI is also beneficial in the classroom. As this episode is posted, students and educators from around the country are about to compete in the finals of the Presidential AI Challenge in Washin...

Keri Cagle, Ed.D., ORISE Director, joins Michael Holtz as special co-host for the ORISE Featurecast. In this episode, they talk to Scott Crawford, Ph.D., a research physical scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Lab in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has served as an ORISE mentor and was once an ORISE research program participant. NETL is dedicated to innovating and accelerating the nation’s energy solutions in hydrocarbon, geothermal energy and critical minerals pr...

Sara Howard, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist for the ORISE Health Studies group. She is co-project manager of the Comprehensive Epidemiologic Data Resource (CEDR), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) data repository relating to the health effects for DOE workers, contractors, subcontractors, former workers, as well as the communities around DOE sites. Through CEDR, data is made available to researchers, educators and students, whether they are asking questions specific to radiation or are learning c...

Imagine using a protein from bacteria as a cleaning solution to reduce or eliminate food borne illnesses. That's the research Sheetal Jha conducted as an ORISE research program participant at the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service. Jha is pursuing her doctoral degree at Louisiana State University and her ORISE appointment ended in October 2025. Her presentation on bacteriocins and safer foods was named Fan Favorite at the 2025 ORAISE Ignite Off! competition Jah...

Annakate Schatz is an ORISE Research Program Participant at the United State Department of Agriculture National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. She is studying foot and mouth disease among hooved animals – pigs, sheep, goats, cattle and water buffalo – in Vietnam. Foot and mouth disease is not present in United States, but it is endemic around the world. The disease has some significant economic consequences for farm productivity and potential trade restrictions. As a result, the USDA wants to ma...

Nearly every conversation we have on the ORISE Featurecast about the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship discusses the challenge of the application process. In this episode, Michael Holtz and guest co-host Natasja Brown take a deep dive into the application and the process through which AEF Fellows are selected. They are joined by Stacie Marvin, an AEF alumnus who was a fellow on Capitol Hill in 2023, and Lora Taylor, a current Fellow at Library of Congress. Natasja Denise Brown is...

Sk Nafiz Rahaman is an ORISE participant in the Graduate Research Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. As part of his internship, he is developing an interactive tool to visualize electric grid risks and analyzing the impact of data center growth on energy affordability. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, Rahaman talks about the part of his research that focuses on the encroachment of kudzu and other high-growth plants on power lines and the potential to cause outages. His poster “A ...

Kalidas Mainali, Ph.D., is an ORISE postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service. He is stationed at the USDA ARS Eastern Regional Research Center in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, where Mainali is studying methods for creating biofuels and other valuable resources from agricultural waste. Mainali is a native of Nepal who also studied in Scotland, so he brings a wealth of world-wise experience to his research, but says that he ultimately decided to pursue his ...

Jin Whan Bae is a Nuclear Reactor Analyst in the Research and Test Reactor Physics Group within the Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He was the recipient of an ORISE Mentor Award in 2024. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, Bae talks to host Michael Holtz about his research experience, which covers a wide range of topics related to nuclear science, including fuel cycle modeling and analysis, fission and fusion reactor physics ...

The 2025-26 cohort of Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows has begun their fellowship year in Washington, D.C. Natajsa Brown, an educator from Ocean Springs, Miss., is serving as co-host for this cohort's series of ORISE Featurecasts. In this conversation with host Michael Holtz, Brown introduces herself and what led her to apply for the AEF. As you'll hear, it's going to be a great season of conversations. Welcome, Natasja! Natasja Denise Brown is a passionate science educator with tw...

Peer review evaluation of an individual or groups work by another individual or group with expertise in the same field or a related field. Peer reviewed work may include proposals to conduct scientific research, ongoing research itself, or a submitted papers based on ongoing or completed research. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, host Michael Holtz talks to Colleen Iversen, Ph.D., a former ORISE research participation program participant who now serves as a peer reviewer for ORISE. Thei...

Janine Pino, data librarian for Oak Ridge National Laboratory Research Library and Information Services, discussed “AI Literacy: Secure and Effective Use of Generative AI” as part of the ORISE Symposium on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, Pino takes a deeper dive into the topic of generative AI, including how to craft strong prompts, critically evaluate AI-generated output, and navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of using these tools in scholarly research an...

Valisha Edwards is an ORISE Fellow in the FBI Visiting Scientist Program. At the time of this conversation, Edwards was in the Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit where she managed multiple projects ranging from primary explosives to toxicology, overseeing analytical techniques and instrumentation that pertains to these projects. "I typically map out the research in general in its entirety, and then I just do the testing that's required for each project," she said. Edwards has pr...

Jake Janssen is an ORISE Research Program Participant appointed to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense. His research focuses on neuroscience, and hazardous chemicals in trauma medicine. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, he says "We look at novel polytrauma scenarios involving organophosphates and other pharmaceutical grade drugs, and traumatic brain injuries or TBIs. We want to improve upon treatment guidelines and combat casualty care through new polypharmacy me...

Jingfan Chen, Ph.D., says she understood that her research had impact outside the laboratory setting when she was studying the solubility of cancer drugs. Lack of solubility -- put simply, whether a drug molecule can dissolve in liquid -- keeps potential cancer drugs from reaching the market. Her study of ways to make these drugs more soluble opened her eyes to the importance of her research outside the lab. Chen took first place in the 2024 ORISE Postdoc Poster Session Showcase for her research...

ORISE Featurecast host Michael Holtz is the first to admit he isn't a fan of math. What he knows now is that he wasn't encouraged or given the ability to grow into his understanding of mathematics. In this episode, he and Zachary Minchow-Proffitt, a 2025 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow, have a conversation about Social Emotional Learning with Ralph Pantozzi, also a current AEF Fellow, and Dr. Sharon Sikora, an AEF Alumnus. Social Emotional Learning helps educators understand how to...

Rebecca Masline, Ph.D., is a researcher at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She completed her Ph.D. at University of California San Diego in 2023. She took third place in the ORISE Postdoc Poster Session Showcase in 2024 for her poster on helium ash in the exhaust streams created by nuclear fusion. In this conversation, Masline explains that when atoms combine to make fusion happen, we get energy, which we like, but we also get one ash of helium ...

Alison Gerken, Ph.D., a research ecologist with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, was one of the recipients of a 2024 ORISE Mentor Award for her excellence in mentoring young scientists. In this conversation with ORISE Featurecast host Michael Holtz, Gerken discusses the importance of mentorship for herself and for young scientists. She says learning to use the tools of experimental design and biology to answer questions about behavior and ecology fuele...

Gene Peters is the chief of Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research at the FBI Laboratory in Virginia, where he leads research staff to develop new capabilities in, improve existing methods for, and strengthen the foundations and defensibility of science applied to forensic, counterterrorism, and intelligence challenges. His team's research spans forensic aspects of anthropology, molecular biology, analytical chemistry, genetics, geology, microbiology, statistics, toxicology, and physical...

Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows have a unique role in the nation's STEM education system. They represent educators from all over the country in policy discussions, and they help develop classroom and other educational resources that are accessible to educators and students everywhere. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, host Michael Holtz and guest co-host Zachary Proffitt-Minchow, himself an AEF Fellow, discuss how Fellows develop and can help amplify the availability of th...

ORISE is at the forefront of helping educate the U.S. scientific workforce of the future. Educators play a key role in this efforts. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, host Michael Holtz and special co-host Zachary Minchow-Proffitt have a conversation with two Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows about the role of educators in helping their students see themselves pursuing STEM careers. Victoria Thomson, an AEF Fellow at USGS, and Jessica Fries-Gaither, an AEF Fellow at the Libr...