ORAU has awarded competitive research grants totaling $180,000 to 36 junior faculty from its member institutions. The annual grants are made through the company’s Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards program, which provides seed grants to enrich the research and professional growth of young faculty.
Andy Page, ORAU president CEO, received the Corridor Champion Award from the Tennessee Valley Corridor during its 30th annual national meeting. Ashley Stowe, chief research and university partnerships officer, also participated in a panel discussion on the nuclear renaissance in Tennessee.
Alberto Vazquez-Salazar, Ph.D., is a NASA postdoctoral fellow working at UCLA in the lab of Professor Irene Chen. He studies how life may have started on Earth by focusing on a molecule called RNA, or ribonucleic acid, which is a critical molecule that exists in all living things. His work is a part of astrobiology that explores how life began on Earth and how we might find signs of life elsewhere in the universe. In this episode of Further Together, Vazquez-Salazar talks to host Michael Holtz about how science has always seemed to be part of his life. Growing up in Mexico City, his mom, a botanist, kept books and plant specimens everywhere. “Science was just part of everyday life,” he says. “It was as normal as finding cereal in the pantry.” Listen to learn more about Vazquez-Salazar’s journey to NASA. To learn more about the NASA Postdoctoral Program and when applications open, visit https://npp.orau.org/index.html.
