Further Together, the ORAU podcast

Further Together, the ORAU podcast, covers all things ORAU, through interviews with our experts who provide innovative scientific and technical solutions for our customers. Learn about ORAU’s storied history, how we’re impacting an ever-changing world, as well as our commitment to our community.

Listen to all 175+ episodes of Further Together on Blubrry.com. You can also find Further Together on the Apple Podcasts app for iOS devices, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SiriusXM, Pandora, TuneIn, and Amazon Music.

Latest Episodes

Episode 188 Decoding the data ecosystem: How ORAU is helping accelerate discovery in omics research

The National Institutes of Health Common Fund Data Ecosystem aims to enable broad use of Common Fund data to accelerate discovery. NIH Common Fund programs generate a wide range of diverse and valuable data sets and knowledge designed to be used by the research community. The CFDE aims to facilitate improved discovery, reuse, integration, and analyses of these datasets to form novel hypothesis for accelerating discoveries in biomedical research. ORAU received a contract from the NIH to develop a state-of-the-art training center for users of the CFDE. In this episode of Further Together, Allissa Dillman, Ph.D., co-principal investigator and owner of BioData Sage LLC, and Jennifer Burnette, ORAU project director, talk to host Michael Holtz about the importance of the CFDE Training Center and how it can help researchers mine data for omics research of various kinds.

Listen to Episode 188 Transcript for Episode 188

Further Together podcast episode 188 image

Episode 187 Watching the sausage get made: A conversation with Rachel Harris, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Management Fellow

As a child in rural Appalachia, Rachel Harris spent her days in her father’s vegetable garden, playing with dinosaur figurines and dreaming of ancient worlds. Today, she’s part of a very different world, working behind the scenes at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., as a NASA Postdoctoral Management Program (NPMP) fellow. Harris, who holds a Ph.D. in geosciences with a focus on biogeochemistry and environmental microbiology, isn't in a traditional lab or field site. Instead, she’s embedded in science management and policy, where NASA’s missions are carefully shaped and supported. In this episode of Further Together, Harris discusses how she wanted to watch the sausage get made from a space policy perspective. “I thought I had a good understanding of NASA bureaucracy, but I've come to realize how interconnected and thorough the process really is," Harris said. "There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that ensures everything NASA shares with the community is vetted and supported.”

Listen to Episode 187 Transcript for Episode 187

Further Together podcast episode 187 image

Episode 186 Unlocking the challenge of growing food in space: A conversation with Luke Fountain, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Luke Fountain, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow on the Space Crop Production Team at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The UK native's research focuses on on supplementing astronauts' diet with fresh food that is grown in space. "Eventually, we're hoping to replace calories. And as we transition to become more earth-independent, obviously, we want the astronauts to be able to supply, grow more of their own food, so we're less reliant on resupply," he said during his interview for Further Together. Fountain adds that growing plants in space is not easy, and that part of the challenge involves the significantly higher carbon dioxide levels in the International Space Station, where experiments involving plants take place. Learn more about Fountain's research and its importance to future space flight during this episode. Learn more about the NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at https://npp.orau.org/

Listen to Episode 186 Transcript for Episode 186

Further Together podcast episode 186 image

Episode 185 'I can't imagine not working at NASA:' A conversation with Bradley Gay, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Bradley Gay, Ph.D., describes both his career and life paths as a “long-winding, topsy-turvy journey,” but the long road he took to get to the NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program was clearly worth it. Gay is a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he studies permafrost carbon feedback in Arctic tundra. In this episode of the Further Together: The ORAU Podcast, Gay talks about his research, why it is important, his career trajectory and more. He also highly recommends the NASA NPP program as a place for up-and-coming scientists to find their place.

Read the feature story

Listen to Episode 185 Transcript for Episode 185

Further Together podcast episode 185 image

Episode 184 Getting paid to do what you love: A conversation with Sanchita Pal, Ph.D., NASA NPP Fellow

Sanchita Pal, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow studying solar storms at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. In this episode of Further Together, Pal discusses the planetary impact of solar storms. “Earth has a magnetosphere, so that actually protects us from the heavy impact of these solar storms. But other planets like Mars and Venus, which do not have magnetospheres, are very much affected by these kinds of storms because they can lose their atmospheric mass, which is a huge field of study right now, as we are planning to go to Mars in the Artemis Mission.” Pal talks about growing up in India, moving to Finland for her research, how her interest in solar storms began, and how she leapt at the NPP opportunity.

Read the feature story

Listen to Episode 184 Transcript for Episode 184

Further Together podcast episode 184 image

Previous Episodes

When Jim Sears retired from the U.S. Air Force after 33 years of service, friends and mentors told him he would miss two things: the people and the mission. Since joining ORAU as senior vice president a year ago, Sears says those are the things that keep him coming to work every day. That "has really been better than I could have expected for my first step on this second mountain of a journey," he said during a recent interview for Further Together: The ORAU Podcast. In this episode Sears discusses his career journey, the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in an ever-changing federal government landscape, why he and his wife moved to East Tennessee. and what brings him joy.

Listen to Episode 183 Transcript for Episode 183
Ashley Stowe, Ph.D., is ORAU's new chief research and university partnerships officer. An accomplished scientist and inventor, Stowe joined ORAU after an 18-year career at the Y-12 National Security Complex that included standing up the Oak Ridge Enhanced Technology and Training Center. In this episode of Further Together, Stowe talks about the excitement he has for the work being done by the Research and University Partnerships Office, including the focus on nuclear energy workforce capacity-building through the ORAU STEM Accelerator, the various grant programs offered to University Consortium members, and the possibilities for research opportunities open to any employee at ORAU. All that his office manages has the potential to benefit our government agency customers and help grow the company.

Listen to Episode 182 Transcript for Episode 182
Chinmayee Govinda Raj, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow who conducts research for the Lunar Explorer Instrument for Space Biology Applications, or LEIA Project, at the NASA Ames Research Center. The LEIA Project will send microbes to the southern hemisphere of the moon on the upcoming Artemis II mission. Further Together host Michael Holtz talks to Govinda Raj about her fellowship, and the fact that she is an outlier in her family. She says everyone in her family is an artist of some kind, and she wanted a change of pace. She knew from an early age that she wanted to work for NASA, but suffered from imposter syndrome. Still she took her journey one step at a time to get where she is today. Listen to the conversation to learn more. To learn about the NASA NPP, visit https://npp.orau.org.

Listen to Episode 181 Transcript for Episode 181
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.

Listen to Episode 180 Transcript for Episode 180
Brenda Blunt, ORAU senior director of health policy, is passionate about the connections between nutrition and both physical and mental health. She is a mom, grandmother, wife, nurse, primal health coach, farmer and policy wonk. Blunt says all of those roles together make health and how we can better care for ourselves important to her. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, rolls out his plan to Make America Healthy Again, much of the focus is on the role of better nutrition and its connection to health. Blunt was MAHA before it was cool, and often leans into the teachings of Florence Nightingale, who advocated for a holistic view of health that emphasized the importance of fresh air, clean water, efficient drainage, cleanliness of patients and care areas, and sunlight. In this conversation, Blunt and hosts Michael Holtz and Matthew Underwood discuss how we got to being one of the richest countries in the world and one of the least healthy, how we didn’t get here overnight, how government agencies can work together to help Americans make better choices, and how we can individually and collectively take steps to make ourselves and the country healthier.

Listen to Episode 179 Transcript for Episode 179

View the full Further Together Podcast Archive

Further Together, the ORAU podcast

Latest Episodes

Episode 188 Decoding the data ecosystem: How ORAU is helping accelerate discovery in omics research

Episode 187 Watching the sausage get made: A conversation with Rachel Harris, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Management Fellow

Episode 186 Unlocking the challenge of growing food in space: A conversation with Luke Fountain, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Episode 185 'I can't imagine not working at NASA:' A conversation with Bradley Gay, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Episode 184 Getting paid to do what you love: A conversation with Sanchita Pal, Ph.D., NASA NPP Fellow

Previous Episodes

Episode 183: Committed to the people and the mission: A conversation with Jim Sears, ORAU senior vice president

Episode 182: Break it or build it, think differently: Ashley Stowe, Ph.D., ORAU Chief Research and University Partnerships Officer

Episode 181: From imposter syndrome to the Artemis Mission: A conversation with Chinmayee Govinda Raj, Ph.D., NASA Postdoc Fellow

Episode 180: Searching for the origins of life one RNA molecule at a time: A conversation with Alberto Vazquez-Salazar, Ph.D.

Episode 179: Making America healthy again will take all of us: A conversation with Brenda Blunt, senior director of health policy

Impact Areas

Contact us