Episodes

As National Preparedness Month comes to a close, we offer a second episode of Further Together to focus on our expertise in the preparedness space. This conversation focuses on preparedness through various lenses, including mental health and psychological first aid, and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. Michael Holtz and Amber Davis talk to Matthew Schnupp, project manager and health education specialist on ORAU's public health and healthcare team. To learn more about ORAU's prepar...

he American Cancer Society and its advocacy affiliate, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, are committed to ending cancer as we know it, for everyone. ORAU has supported the work of both organizations by sponsoring Relay For Life and Lights of Hope events for many years. Further Together host Michael Holtz is a member of ACS CAN's National Ambassador Team and a long-time volunteer for the organization. In this episode, he and co-host Matthew Underwood talk to Lisa Lacasse, preside...

Given our history of working in the cancer space, it makes perfect sense that ORAU supports several organizations that provide support and advocate for people with cancer. One of those organizations is the Cancer Support Community of East Tennessee, which provides an array of support and educational programs for cancer patients, survivors and family members. In this episode of Further Together, Michael Holtz and Matthew Underwood talk to Beth Hamil, executive director of CSCET, about the organiz...

ORAU has decades of experience helping the healthcare and public health systems prepare for, respond to and recover from events like pandemics, natural disasters, terrorism and other unforeseen disruptive events. September is National Preparedness Month. In this conversation, Michael Holtz and Amber Davis talk to Jennifer Burnette and Will Artley from ORAU's Public Health and Healthcare Team, about preparedness for older individuals, rural communities, urban areas, etc. They also discuss the rip...

s an employer based in East Tennessee, ORAU is a humble company with a great story to tell. In this episode, Andy Page, president and CEO; Keri Cagle, senior director of all things peer review; and Lauren Schaffer from our employee relations team, discuss the strength of our company. With host Michael Holtz and co-host Bryan Campbell the team discusses what it means to be One ORAU, how our corporate culture has been strengthened over the years by the pandemic and the flexibility of our workforce...

Use of complementary and alternative medicine, like acupuncture, chiropractic and more, is on the rise. As with most health care services, women tend to be the decision-makers when it comes to using CAM. Brenda Blunt, senior director of health policy, and Davyda Hammond, safety culture program manager, are investigating the experiences of women who use CAM, as well as how providers market to clients and how they see their role in healthcare. Their project is funded through the ORAU-Directed Rese...

Our nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Educational Institutions are often untapped resources abounding in talent, ingenuity and expertise but often lacking in the material resources necessary for scientific research. Tapping into HBCU talent resources is why ORAU and the Ecological Society of America officially began a working relationship with the signing of a memorandum of understanding during the ESA’s 108th annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, on Monday...

ORAU's Research and University Partnerships Office offers Innovation Partnership Grants to bring together University Consortium members and ORAU subject matter experts for meaningful collaborations. One of those collaborations involved Vanderbilt University and the funding of a Tennessee University-Business Showcase focused on building a biomedical/biotech economic engine in Middle Tennessee and beyond. In this episode, host Michael Holtz talks to Brenda Blunt, ORAU senior director of health pol...

For the first time ever, the ORAU Research and University Partnerships Office funded four interns to work in various capacities across the organization. Each represents a member of the ORAU University Consortium. This conversation is led by guest host Adam Delahoussaye, a RUPO intern working in Communications and Marketing, and co-hosted by Michael Holtz. Adam, along with Kayla Lacey, Kelsey O'Brien and Tony Zybinski, discuss their varied internship experiences, what may be in store for their fu...

Public health has been in the spotlight over the last few years. In this episode, host Michael Holtz talked to two public health luminaries: Julie Crumly, Ph.D., senior researcher at ORAU, and Paul Erwin, M.D., DrPH, professor and dean of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health. Crumly received the UAB School of Public Health's Alumni Award for Practice earlier this year. Erwin has roots in East Tennessee. During this conversation, we discussed Crumly's award, how she and...

Dr. Aaron Yung is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He's a theorist working on what he calls the "mission of the century," the James Webb Space Telescope team. He has been making predictions via galaxy models for the JWST team since he was a graduate student five years ago. During this conversation, host Michael Holtz and Yung discuss the science behind predictive modeling and what it means to be a scientist telling the story of the universe. Interested in t...

On every episode of the Further Together podcast we talk about the work that ORAU does across our various capabilities, but we don't often step back and take stock of our impact on a national and global scale. ORAU is a humble organization focused on the public good, not on bragging about the work we've done over the last 76 years. All of that changes in this episode. CEO Andy Page and Senior Vice President Jeff Miller put some of ORAU's impact in perspective. That impact has been tremendous in ...

The National Library of Medicine, located on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., is the world's largest biomedical library and an important resources accessed by millions of people around the world. If you're familiar with PubMed, you know the NLM. The NLM is also one of ORAU's longest-standing customers. For more than 30 years, ORAU has helped promote and raise awareness for the library's resources, and help people understand how to use them. More recently, ORAU ha...

Dr. LaToya Myles is the deputy director of the Air Resources Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Division. ORAU works in partnership with NOAA ATDD to perform advanced weather and climate research. Research at ARL focuses on the boundary layer, which is the very air we breathe every day. The ARL includes the Climate Reference Network, which collects data from instrument stations located in remote areas across the country. These i...

Alejandro Borlaff recently completed his NASA Postdoctoral Program experience at NASA Ames, and will continue working for NASA on a number of collaborative projects. He has a long-term interest in space telescopes and Borlaff has gotten to do some amazing work in this area. He calls himself an "ophthalmologist for space telescopes." In this episode, Borlaff and host Michael Holtz talk about his work, how his interest in science developed, and how he moved from Spain to fulfill his NASA dreams. T...

Erica Barlow, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow based at Penn State University working at the Laboratory for Agnostic Biosignatures team. Originally from Australia, Barlow focuses on the question of whether rocks from the ancient Earth have or had life inside them and how life might have gotten there. In this conversation with host Michael Holtz, Barlow discusses her origin story, including her interest in environmental science from an early age, being mentored and mentoring others, a...

ORAU hires and manages contractors on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the National Student Services Contract. Contractors work in the EPA's Office of Research and Development for up to five years and then often become full-time regular employees of the agency. Further Together host Michael Holtz talks to Karen Cleveland and Geri Philpott, who manage the EPA NSSC for ORAU. They talk about the importance of this program to the EPA, the types of work participants are engage...

Ken Tobin, ORAU chief research and university partnerships officer, introduces host Michael Holtz to Dr. Laurene Tetard, associate professor in the NanoScience Technology Center at the University of Central Florida. Together they talk about the importance of university partnerships to ORAU and how we work together to provide solutions to our federal government partners. Dr. Tetard digs into her research and talks about the importance of networking for her research as well as for her students. Th...

ORAU is among the sponsors of a Research Community Forum presented by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Human Protection. The two-day event will be held March 29 and 30, 2023, in Knoxville. In this episode, Ken Tobin, ORAU chief research and university partnerships officer, and Cathy Fore, senior director of university partnerships, talk about the RCF, why this event is important to the research community, the importance of human protection regulations for research, who...

ORAU's Annual Meeting of the Council of Sponsoring Institutions is held to explore relevant topics in higher education. This year's topic is “Climate Security and Environmental Justice: Pathways to Achieving the 2050 Carbon Net-Zero Goal.” Experts and leaders from academia, federal agencies, and national organizations will share their views on technology innovation and transformation; science-based models for an environmentally equitable society; and future workforce development needs. Further T...

Samson Johnson, Ph.D., is a new NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow who has been in his role for just a few months, is studying exoplanet demographics or how many and where exoplanets are. An exoplanet is an extrasolar planet and there are approximately 5,000 known in the universe. During this conversation, host Michael Holtz and Dr. Johnson discuss his work, how his interest in astronomy was stoked, how a high school teacher changed the course of his life, the importance of mentorship and so much ...

Tiffany Lewis, Ph.D., is a NASA Post-Doctoral Program Fellow working at the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory on theoretical modeling of jets ion active galaxies, especially blazars. She has been a NASA NPP Fellow for two years. In this episode of Further Together: the ORAU Podcast, host Michael Holtz talks to Lewis about her work, being mentored and mentoring others, and what she has planned for the future. As you'll discover, Lewis was initially interested in science policy before turning her a...

As a company, ORAU supports financially a number of non-profit organizations in the communities where we do business. As CEO Andy Page says, it's the role of a good corporate citizen. Additionally, many of our employees give of their time, talent and treasure to support organizations that are important to them. For this year's Thanksgiving episode, host Michael Holtz asked several colleagues to share how and why they support the organizations they do. The organizations, the skills and the reason...

For Stacey Whaley, winning ORAU's Extreme Classroom Makeover 2022 was one of the biggest surprises of her life. She knew she could put the $25,000 prize to good use in her classroom, and boy did she ever. During this conversation, Whaley talks to host Michael Holtz about the new technology she purchased for her classroom, from digital microscopes and iPads to virtual reality headsets and a floor projector. Applications for the 2023 edition of Extreme Classroom Makeover are now open, and Whaley u...