Further Together the ORAU Podcast

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...

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 satelli...

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 c...

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 pol...

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...

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 yo...

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....

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 thi...

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...

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 attendin...

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...

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 i...

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 M...

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,...

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)...

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 m...

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 Trade...

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 Furt...

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, incl...

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...

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...

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 mechanic...

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 s...

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’Maon...

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 researc...