00;00;02;10 - 00;00;32;06 Cathy Fore Whenever I invite a speaker, I want to make sure that the value proposition to the speaker is just is equal to the value proposition of the attendees in the audience. And so I ask the speakers, yes, talk about, you know, what what you're doing and lessons learned best practices that you've, you know, done in this area within your own communities in projects. 00;00;32;06 - 00;00;37;14 Cathy Fore But I also want you to challenge the academic audience to think outside the box. 00;00;37;16 - 00;01;08;05 Narrator You're listening to further together the ORAU podcast. Join Michael Holtz and his guests for conversations about all things ORAU. They'll talk about, ORAU storied history, Our impact on an ever changing world, our innovative scientific and technical solutions for our customers, and our commitment to the communities where we do business. Welcome to further Together the ORAU podcast. 00;01;08;08 - 00;01;29;25 Michael Holtz Welcome to further Together the ORAU podcast. As ever, it's me, your host Michael holds from the Communications and Marketing Department ORAU and I am joined as I have been on a regular basis with my co-host Matthew Underwood, also from the Communications and Marketing Departmentat ORAU. Matthew, how are you? 00;01;29;27 - 00;01;31;22 Matthew Underwood I'm good, Michael. How are you doing today? 00;01;31;25 - 00;01;54;14 Michael Holtz I'm doing well. So we are talking about the ORAU annual meeting, which is one of my favorite events of the year. I always love talking about the work that happens in the research and the University Partnerships office, so I'm ecstatic. You get to be part of this conversation for the first time. 00;01;54;16 - 00;02;04;17 Matthew Underwood Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. You know, I love know the research of the event that I've done and how it impacts so many people. So I'm excited to talk about it and kind of look forward to this year's meeting and see what we have coming up. 00;02;04;19 - 00;02;36;13 Michael Holtz Awesome. Well, without further ado, let me bring our guest to the table, Ken Tobin, who is the chief research officer and the leader of All Things research in the University Partnerships Office and Cathy Fore who is the senior director of University partnerships, is joining us for this conversation. We're looking ahead to the ORAU annual meeting. Cathy and Ken welcome to the table. 00;02;36;13 - 00;02;38;16 Michael Holtz I'm so glad that you're here. 00;02;38;18 - 00;03;09;21 Ken Tobin Well, thank you very much for inviting us both this morning. Michael and Matthew, we're glad to be back. Now, as you say, we have a very important annual meeting coming up on March 4th and fifth. We do this meeting every year. And Cathy Fore has just worked the team, you know, to death to pull together what I think is probably going to be one of our biggest meetings in a long time, not to mention the fact that I think it's the first meeting since COVID where we weren't even hybrid. 00;03;09;26 - 00;03;38;22 Ken Tobin This is all in-person meeting. And right now we have, I think around 170 to 180 people registered so far. We have about six of our universities that are represented will be attending the meeting. And I think we have around 40 between 40 and 50 ORAU staff who are who have registered to attend so far. And we're hoping we might be able to entice a few more to come. 00;03;38;24 - 00;03;57;11 Michael Holtz Excellent. That sounds like a great crowd and I am happy to say that I am among the ORAU staff registered for this meeting, so. Excellent. I can't wait. Cathy, talk about why this meeting is important for ORAU. 00;03;57;14 - 00;04;32;01 Cathy Fore Well, thanks, Michael. And hello, everyone in the virtual audience. This annual meeting. First of all, I want to state that it is just for our university consortium members. Each year when we conduct our annual council meeting is a special theme that that reflects the investments that the federal agencies are making. And we try to align those investments with the capabilities and interests of our member universities. 00;04;32;01 - 00;05;20;01 Cathy Fore All 153. And so the theme for this year is redefining the next generation STEM enterprise. And the reason we chose that is because we are seeing more and more proof in the news in federal funding opportunities, in conferences where the discussion topic is, where is our future workforce going to come from? And private industry is really stepping up to the plate saying, Universities, I need students, your graduates in skill sets related to advanced technologies. 00;05;20;27 - 00;06;15;25 Cathy Fore We are the world of work and the skill sets that are needed are changing so fast. For example, with the Securing the CHIPS Act for America is requiring new skill sets at the technician as well as doctoral student expertise. If we are going to be a leader in microelectronics for the nation, that's just one example. And so we put all that information together and said, Why don't we be that integrator and bring federal agencies, private industry, our member universities, including community colleges and tech schools, and make that dialog happen. 00;06;15;27 - 00;06;55;21 Cathy Fore And so this meeting is going to focus on how do we build a future resilient workforce. You could attract and retain students in certain STEM fields, but how can they become resilient when emerging technologies are happening around them every day? The second topic is going to be equitable access. So how can we engage everyone, gives everyone an opportunity? Because everyone can have an opportunity to be engaged in the exciting jobs for the future. 00;06;55;23 - 00;07;24;15 Cathy Fore And then the last or the other one is on our ORAU STEM accelerator, which we just launched last year, which has a mission of actually doing and caring forward what this meeting is all about. And the last panel session will have is, okay, we've talked about many different things, but how do we package that into strategic alliances that makes sense? 00;07;24;17 - 00;07;50;27 Cathy Fore So how do we really do the hard part, which is actually getting people together to do something and make an impact, You know, And so we have a lot to talk about, and I hope that attendees will lead this meeting with an action agenda and so excited that they want to talk more about it with each other and not just go back and do their own thing. 00;07;50;29 - 00;08;31;14 Cathy Fore So I think ORAU is trying to be a thought leader and making good things happen for the nation, not just our communities, our states, the for the nation, and to be recognized as truly a leader in STEM education, STEM research and creating a richer population of jobs and new interest at the earliest age in the education ecosystem. 00;08;31;16 - 00;09;14;07 Michael Holtz So Cathy and Ken, talking about the you know, looking at basically looking at the topic and really from the research of the University Partnerships office perspective, there is a lot going on. In addition to the annual meeting, which is bringing everyone together. You know, Cathy, you mentioned the ORAU STEM Accelerator or Innovation Partnership grants, you know, do some of this kind of hands on training to get you know, we have examples of, you know, students being certified to do very specific pharmaceutical related skills. 00;09;14;07 - 00;09;40;19 Michael Holtz And, you know, so training for next generation STEM enterprise really is in our DNA as an organization. This meeting really just kind of capitalizes on a lot of what we're already doing and hopefully bringing partners together to do even more. 00;09;40;21 - 00;10;07;24 Ken Tobin Yeah, I might jump in here and just to say, if you look at ORAU as a company and we are so impactful in and the work that we do in workforce, right. The Department of Energy, Nasser Environment Protection Agency, our research lab, you know, so many placements and participants and postdocs and early career faculty that we provide opportunities for thousands. 00;10;07;24 - 00;10;40;02 Ken Tobin In fact, over 9500 every year that we place. But you know, when you when you go out and you talk to industry about us and other organizations and other states, they know very little about us. They know very little about our success there. And so this this meeting, along with the work that we're doing with the STEM accelerator, it's really focused on, you know, ORAU’s historic mission really to to provide value to the nation, to be impactful to the country. 00;10;40;04 - 00;11;11;24 Ken Tobin And we start looking at the opportunity to develop STEM education, workforce pipeline development, bringing in the conversations with with unions and union labor, how do we get people trained up to help support next generation or, you know, national needs in in a STEM workforce? Our community colleges, our technical schools know beyond beyond what we do with our universities, but in partnership with our universities. 00;11;11;27 - 00;11;47;20 Ken Tobin This meeting, the STEM accelerator, it's all about really how do we position ORAU to be more impactful on a national level, right beyond the incredible work that we do for the federal laboratories and the national laboratories. And I think that's very key because we're moving into a new a new generation of opportunity within the company to really impact the nation in a positive way and to help the US grow its its STEM capability and support our industries and support our companies and and everything. 00;11;47;21 - 00;11;54;27 Ken Tobin So it's it's a it's a great time to be. And I think. 00;11;55;00 - 00;12;13;20 Matthew Underwood Absolutely so you know, you talk about, you know, why this meeting is important. And you know, the key topic that's going to be discussed in some of the other sub topics in the panel speakers, what do you want the consortium members that are attending to really take away from this meeting? 00;12;13;23 - 00;12;15;03 Ken Tobin Cathy, you want to start with that? 00;12;15;08 - 00;12;47;25 Cathy Fore Yeah, that's a good question. Whenever I invite a speaker, I want to make sure that the value proposition to the speaker is just is equal to the value proposition of the attendees and the audience. And so I as the speakers. Yes. Talk about, you know, what what you're doing and lessons learned best practices that you've, you know, done in this area within your own communities and projects. 00;12;47;25 - 00;13;40;21 Cathy Fore But I also want you to challenge the academic audience to think outside the box. And so what do they need to do to, say, revise their curriculum? What new technology tools could they incorporate into the classroom? K Through 16? It doesn't matter. So I want them to be thinking more innovatively of if I partnered with Intel Labs, what would that look like and how could that expand my university's research portfolio, as well as being recognized as graduating thought leaders in the needs that mesh well with where Intel strategic plans are going? 00;13;40;23 - 00;13;47;06 Cathy Fore So it's really aligning the teaching and learning environment to the real world. 00;13;47;09 - 00;14;17;09 Ken Tobin The Yeah, I would I would I would add on that that, you know, having these federal agencies, the universities, we have invited guests that are from industry, you know, we're bringing this group of people together to really talk about that whole STEM ecosystem. And as Cathy is saying, you know, the universities play a key and critical part of that. 00;14;17;12 - 00;15;03;00 Ken Tobin But we sometimes, I think, natioanlly fall down is we don't necessarily work together across all these different levels of education and outreach and coordination with industry. And so by having this meeting, we're having that discussion. How do we do that better? How do we maybe align creating programs at the community college level to provide certifications to two year students are going to go work in industry quickly because they they're trying to get out there, start their lives in and, you know, support their families and those types of things, but also say, for example, provide a mechanism for them to take those degrees certifications and put them towards a four year degree if they decide to 00;15;03;00 - 00;15;26;07 Ken Tobin move forward later so that everything builds on its self. It doesn't it's not done in vacuum, in silo, right. So those are the kinds of the conversations that we're talking about. And by bringing everybody together from these different sectors to talk about how we can make that happen, I think that helps put us forward, you know, forward and moving down that path. 00;15;26;09 - 00;15;55;27 Cathy Fore Yeah. And when I invited the speakers and talked with them, each one said the timing for this is perfect and needed. So, you know, we had done our homework. We didn't want to duplicate what other conferences just happened last week are doing the same thing. So it really was a lot of time was spent to structure it the way that it is different. 00;15;55;29 - 00;16;24;11 Cathy Fore And I think the difference is like can said is let's bring everybody together. One room will lock the doors if we have to. And you can't leave until we formed a partnership. I really consider this maybe a paradigm shift and in the conversation it is let's call it the New Manhattan Project instead of workforce development for the nation. 00;16;24;13 - 00;16;51;10 Cathy Fore And I think ORAU can be the leader to push that down the road with the partners that we have for now. There are going to be a lot of newbies at this meeting. They just learned about ORAU. They've been in business doing these kinds of things for a number of years and we haven't linked up until now. 00;16;51;13 - 00;16;52;10 Michael Holtz Right. 00;16;52;12 - 00;17;16;01 Cathy Fore And so the benefit is going to be, I think, across ORAU for these people to learn more about what we do outside the consortium. And so, you know, sometimes we are called matchmakers. And to me this annual meeting is just another way to play matchmaker. 00;17;16;04 - 00;17;36;27 Michael Holtz Well, and one of the things that I've I've loved about that annual meeting and, you know, we certainly capitalized on it last year with a report that we created afterward. Is there really are opportunities in this meeting? I mean, we don't we're not just bringing all of these folks together for two days of, you know, let's chat and go home. 00;17;36;27 - 00;18;11;24 Michael Holtz It's you know, opportunities are at the table for collaboration, for opportunities for our university partners to work with industry and with our agency partners. So it really it really is a productive endeavor. It's it's not just, you know, let's let's have a party for a couple of days. It's really it really results in partnerships. And that's one of the things that I love about this meeting. 00;18;11;26 - 00;18;34;25 Michael Holtz A Because then at some point I get to talk about what came out of some of those partnerships, you know, either here on the podcast or, you know, we talked about in the annual report or whatever that, you know, things really do happen as a result of that annual meeting, which, Cathy, I know it's why you and Ken spent so much time putting this together. 00;18;34;28 - 00;18;52;03 Cathy Fore It does take a lot of time. You have to start early, start usually right after the meeting. Actually, before the meeting is even occurring, I'm already got a list of speakers identified for the 2025 meeting with you know. 00;18;52;03 - 00;18;53;21 Michael Holtz With the theme is already right. 00;18;53;21 - 00;18;58;21 Ken Tobin Yes we do have a topic. I'm not going to share it. It's a surprise. 00;18;58;23 - 00;19;05;29 Michael Holtz Yeah, absolutely. Well well, we'll hope that until later conversation for sure. 00;19;06;01 - 00;19;08;00 Matthew Underwood To get good teaser to look ahead. 00;19;08;02 - 00;19;14;11 Michael Holtz But, you know, so who are some of the speakers that are that are coming this year? 00;19;14;14 - 00;19;26;15 Cathy Fore Well, we've got three keynote speakers. For example, we have Sudip Parikh, who's the CEO of American Association. 00;19;26;17 - 00;19;29;07 Ken Tobin American Association for the Advancement of Science. 00;19;29;08 - 00;19;54;06 Cathy Fore Thank you. Her or he's going to open up the meeting and he's so excited to come. He's he's a well-known speaker and he's got a strong message, particularly with AAAS the same opportunity alliance that they just launched last year and now. are you is actually a member. And then we have another keynote speaker, Elizabeth Albro 00;19;54;09 - 00;20;23;11 Cathy Fore She's the commissioner of education research at the Department of Education, and she's a newbie. So we've never had department heads, surprisingly, to speak at our meeting. But I also want to point out a couple other speakers who are panelists, and one is John Dyer. He's the associate vice president for Workforce and Economic Development with the American Association of Community Colleges. 00;20;23;13 - 00;21;16;04 Cathy Fore Okay. And then the Nakeisha Pettyjohn, who is leading workforce development activities for the National Skills Coalition. You know, just think of those two organizations that have been around for a long time, very much involved. But I am let's say, super pumped about Gabriella Thompson, who is the senior director of university research and collaboration at Intel Labs. So she is going to be speaking about really building their future resilient workforce with what Intel is doing in the different states and building new plants and the struggles that they are having right now in trying to get the right skillsets, getting people to fill those job slots that are needed. 00;21;16;06 - 00;21;39;14 Cathy Fore And then another interesting one is Scott Lucas, who is the president of the National Coalition of Advanced Technology Centers. Okay. So we've got the tech centers covered, and so we don't want to lose and, you know, leave anyone out that needs to have a role at this meeting. So I feel good. And, you know, I could have had more. 00;21;39;14 - 00;22;04;08 Cathy Fore But, you know, we have limited time. I mean, we could make this happen all week long if we want to. And then we're going to close with a keynote by someone. Don't have the name right yet. I'm supposed to know next week, but it's for the CHIPS for America and representing is part of commerce. And this and that's going to be a closing keynote. 00;22;04;10 - 00;22;22;25 Cathy Fore They're very committed to this and they understand the importance of it. And so that closing speaker is really set the stage, I think, for more OK leave here today thinking this you know. 00;22;22;28 - 00;22;24;21 Michael Holtz Right. 00;22;24;23 - 00;22;46;21 Ken Tobin And if you think about the CHIPS for America act and you know the opportunity to get somebody here from this department commerce who can talk to us about what that what's going on there that's this whole that it's a great model for the idea of on shoring on semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.. Right. We've over the last couple of decades, a lot of that industry has moved away. 00;22;46;23 - 00;23;16;11 Ken Tobin We need to bring it back for a lot of reasons, national security reasons, economic reasons, you know, all sorts of things. And so here's partnerships with industry, academia, federal government to try and create opportunities and economic enticements and educational reorientation to try and fill the need that they have for producing the STEM workforce that supports the semiconductor manufacturing industry. 00;23;16;12 - 00;23;59;06 Ken Tobin Right. Well, if you think about what we're trying to do with the ORAU STEM accelerator is to do something analogous, if you would, but focused on the nuclear energy industry right. And so we are just kind of launching something they were calling the Partnership for Nuclear Energy, which really does an attempts to do a similar thing. How do we align what's happening in an industry with the growth of new nuclear small modular reactors, the expansion of existing nuclear and extension of existing nuclear, and building a workforce for those new companies and existing companies and energy providers? 00;23;59;09 - 00;24;16;20 Ken Tobin Right. So just, you know, think of what we can learn from what's happening in a positive way on the CHIPS Act with what we're attempting to do on the on the nuclear energy side. It just kind of makes sense to bring these people together and, you know, learn from each other how to move these kinds of opportunities forward. 00;24;16;22 - 00;24;18;29 Michael Holtz Absolutely. 00;24;19;01 - 00;24;38;20 Matthew Underwood You know, I love how we talked about, you know, Cathy used that word matchmaker. And that's really what this meeting is about, bringing, you know, the consortium members with the partners and with the people from outside industries and bringing all those people together to really make a difference and be able to take something out of this meeting. Are there any stories that you all can share of how that's happened in the past at this meeting? 00;24;38;20 - 00;24;45;24 Matthew Underwood You know, a partnership that was made that led to a project that made a difference? 00;24;45;27 - 00;25;24;20 Cathy Fore Yes, I'd like to bring one up. And it actually led to one of our grant programs for Research project, and it still has legs. It's so it's been going on for quite a few years that probably not a lot of people realize. But Penn State University, we had a cybersecurity professor attend the meeting and we also had one of our social scientists at ORAU attend the meeting and they started having a cup of coffee and chatted about common interests. 00;25;24;22 - 00;25;53;00 Cathy Fore His interest at Penn State was on and highly publicized in the news at that time. Fake news and just misinformation. And he was developing an algorithm that would say, why would someone click on something they thought was true, that it was it versus someone that saw it and did not click on it. So what's that human interaction? Why is that happening and what does it look like? 00;25;53;03 - 00;26;36;01 Cathy Fore And so having a cybersecurity specialist matched up with a social scientist was exciting to watch because they come from different backgrounds that different perspectives, and they actually learn from each other. And so they received a grant to do the project and then they together submitted joint proposals to NSF, three of them and they were awarded and now they are executing new curriculum at two of our member institutions in the computer science department. 00;26;36;03 - 00;26;44;14 Cathy Fore So it's making a difference where it needs to make a difference. So that's just one example, right? 00;26;44;16 - 00;26;48;16 Matthew Underwood That's amazing and is awesome. 00;26;48;18 - 00;27;41;11 Ken Tobin It might give another example here, and I think we could tie this back even potentially to, you know, back in 2022 our annual meeting topic was on public health, security and innovation. And we had developed a number of relationships with universities around the COVID epidemic and things like wastewater surveillance and other things. And we had hosted a series of webinars on data science around these topics, and we have created as a mechanism for being able to work more rapidly and quickly with our universities this contractual mechanism where when the universities, instead of working with us under a memorandum of understanding, they're actually working with us under a contract. 00;27;41;14 - 00;28;29;22 Ken Tobin So we bring them, we put a five year kind of broad agency contract in place where we can quickly work with them to get funding to them to help support an effort. So we have a recent success with Arizona State University related to wastewater surveillance that's funded by the CDC Shepherd program. And so that's a great example as well of where we've been working with a number of universities in partnerships and concepts and ideas that have come out of these meetings, these annual meetings, and have actually turned into a fairly significant work funded by the CDC in partnership with OGS ORAU government services to execute on a are really important and interesting program in 00;28;29;23 - 00;28;56;18 Ken Tobin wastewater surveillance. So I think that one is another example. But there's there's things like this that intertwine all across all across the organization between OGS and ORISE and RUPO. And it highlights really the kinds of engagement opportunities that we're creating for our universities that are also beneficial to ORAU as a company to help us, you know, serve the mission that we have for the nation. 00;28;56;20 - 00;29;09;06 Michael Holtz Which strengthens the value proposition for our university consortium members and hopefully, I mean, hopefully everyone benefits, right? 00;29;09;06 - 00;29;10;17 Ken Tobin I mean, yes. 00;29;10;20 - 00;29;48;21 Michael Holtz Everyone benefits across the board because they're doing meaningful work, working on meaningful projects that benefit the nation as a whole, which is all part of our mission as an organization. So it's it's really exciting. It's it's I always get excited by the annual meeting I know you guys do to I'm really looking forward to being part of the meeting this year and listening to all of the speakers and, you know, figuring, helping figure out the key takeaways and all of that stuff. 00;29;48;21 - 00;29;59;07 Michael Holtz So I'm really looking forward to it. Is there anything just by way of wrap up that you want to make sure we cover before we close this conversation? 00;29;59;09 - 00;30;28;15 Ken Tobin I would just say I, I hope that this this podcast will help excite even more people from within ORAU to come and attend because it's just such a cross-cutting topic. And we work with these whole issues of STEM training, education, workforce development, workforce solutions across the entire company. And it's just a great opportunity to bring all of our experts together to hear what's happening, you know, in the rest of the country around this topic. 00;30;28;17 - 00;30;39;12 Ken Tobin So looking forward to it. Great to have the opportunity to discuss this with you all and to get the word out there that it's just around the corner. March 4th or fifth is not very far away. 00;30;39;14 - 00;31;02;09 Michael Holtz Not far away at all. And we'll come back afterward and talk about some of those key takeaways and the importance, you know, what what basically was put on the table during the meeting for opportunities for our university partners, for our agency partners, for industry, etc.. So I'm looking forward to that conversation as well. 00;31;02;12 - 00;31;04;03 Ken Tobin Excellent. 00;31;04;06 - 00;31;24;27 Michael Holtz We'll Cathy Fore and Ken Tobin, Thank you so much for spending this time with Matthew and me, talking about the annual meeting and helping us get excited about what's coming in the next few weeks. It's going to be a great couple of days and I know we're looking forward to it and can't wait to see what happens. 00;31;25;00 - 00;31;27;12 Ken Tobin Excellent. Well, thank you very much for having us. 00;31;27;14 - 00;31;28;10 Cathy Fore Thank you very. 00;31;28;10 - 00;31;31;23 Michael Holtz Much. Absolutely. Have a great day. 00;31;31;26 - 00;31;59;29 Narrator Thank you for listening to Further Together the ORAU podcast to learn more about any of the topics discussed by our experts, visit www.orau.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn @ORAU and on Instagram @ORAU Together if you like. Further Together the ORAU podcast we would appreciate you giving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. 00;32;00;04 - 00;32;02;27 Narrator Your reviews will help more people find the podcast.