Further Together the ORAU Podcast

Recent Episodes

Training future workers in bioprocessing: ORAU's Innovation Partnership with Villanova University

Posted January 18, 2024 • 00:37:16

ORAU and Villanova University teamed up to offer a workshop during which participants received certification in Basic Industry Bioprocessing Techniques. In this episode of Further Together, host Michael Holtz talks with Rosalind Wynn, associate professor in the Villanova Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Tracie Curtright, ORAU project manager, about the Innovation Partnership Program that funded the workshop. The certification earned by workshop participants is recognized by most pharmaceutical industry processing facilities. Participants were successful in growing cells and were able to measure cell viability/population. Mammalian cell culture samples created during this workshop are currently under cryopreservation storage for use in future collaborative projects between Villanova and Jefferson Institute for Bioprocessing. To learn more about the Innovation Partnership Program, visit https://orau.org/partnerships/grant-programs/innovation-partnerships.html

Determining the optimal age to teach climate change science to young people: ODRD-funded research at work

Posted January 10, 2024 • 00:25:11

What is the optimal age to teach climate change science to young people? Chris Nelson, Ed.D., project manager, and Kristin Hurst, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Resources at Southern Illinois University, teamed up on an ORAU-Directed Research and Development project to study when it is best to teach young people about climate change science. They worked under the hypothesis that high school students have more developed cultural and ideological viewpoints, whereas the worldviews of middle school students not quite as developed. At the same time, they reframed the conversation to demonstrate how climate change is impacting things young people enjoy -- food, activity, travel, etc. This conversation focuses on how they approached their research, what they learned and what could happen next as a result of their work together.

Follow your passions: An interview with former NASA NPP Fellow Reinier Janssen

Posted December 20, 2023 • 00:23:34

Reinier Janssen is a staff scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Host Michael Holtz had the opportunity to talk to Janssen toward the end of his NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship, where he worked on novel instrumentation based on superconducting detectors. During this conversation, Holtz and Janssen discuss how he developed his interest in science, what the NASA NPP Fellowship has meant to his career, what drives him, and what happens next. To learn more about the NASA NPP, visit https://npp.orau.org/index.html

Health equity in the spotlight: Brenda Blunt and Michael Holtz record a StoryCorp conversation

Posted December 13, 2023 • 00:42:04

Host Michael Holtz and Brenda Blunt, ORAU senior director of health policy, had the opportunity to participate in the StoryCorps Project while attending the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Health Equity Conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. Listeners may be familiar with StoryCorps from interviews that air on National Public Radio. During this interview, Holtz and Blunt talk about health equity through their experiences in and around the healthcare system and as patients within the system, and how ORAU is working to help solve the equity puzzle. ORAU has permission from the StoryCorps Project to broadcast this interview.

Meeting the Moment: Aligning ORAU's capabilities with the federal government's cancer research priorities

Posted November 29, 2023 • 01:04:28

Further Together host Michael Holtz gets the tables turned on him and becomes the interviewee in this episode. Holtz received a Thought Leadership Research Award through the ORAU Research and University Partnerships Office to write a white paper that makes recommendations for research projects based on ORAU's capabilities and the federal government's cancer research priorities. Matthew Underwood, communications and marketing specialist, and Brenda Blunt, senior health policy director, talk with Holtz about ORAU's history in the cancer space, from running a cancer hospital for 24 years, to managing long-term epidemiology programs for workers exposed to radiation in the workplace, to leading health communications efforts, to affecting policy change to impact patient outcomes, and so much more. Then they walk through Holtz's recommendations for seven potential ORAU-Directed Research and Development projects that could involve some of our university consortium partners. Learn more about the white paper here: https://orau.org/news/releases/2023/making-an-impact-on-cancer-personally-and-professionally.html