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Research plays an important role in the discovery of ways our nation can advance and strengthen its priorities in education, health, science and engineering. Through collaboration with those from multi-disciplinary perspectives, amazing solutions can emerge. ORAU’s research enterprise offers opportunities to connect with the diversity of research excellence offered by its internationally known subject matter experts and its more than 120-consortium member universities.

ORAU’s assets, including unique laboratories at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, complement the research efforts of university faculty and students. With our university partnerships spanning more than seven decades, ORAU offers many ways to create partnerships to explore and develop innovative solutions for some of our nation’s most pressing issues.

In this section:

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    Is social media helping or hindering vaccination rates?

    That’s the question ORAU researchers asking. Members of ORAU’s Health Communications and Marketing Team are collaborating with the University of Georgia to analyze social media conversations across three major vaccine types—childhood immunizations, HPV, and seasonal influenza—to better inform communication strategies aimed at decreasing hesitancy and increasing vaccination rates.

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  • Airplane, Aircraft

    Can analyzing data differently help predict and avoid collisions in the aviation industry?

    ORAU and the Florida Institute of Technology are collaborating to determine if understanding adverse events of aircrafts could result in a significant enhancement of safety protocols in the field of aviation risk assessments. 

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    Can smartphone service as tools to measure potential radiation exposures?

    ORAU is partnering with Oklahoma State University to explore the possibility of using smartphones as personal emergency dosimeters to measure radiation exposure levels in case of radiological or nuclear mass-casualty incidents.

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Research sponsorships

ORAU invests in research through such programs as ORAU-Directed Research Development (ODRD), which serve as a feeder for eventual new sponsored research that can be jointly performed by ORAU and its partner universities. ORAU awards up to $75,000 annually for innovative researched-based approaches/solutions that fall within the intersection of core capabilities of ORAU and our member universities research interests. Annual proposals are typically due in late March.

  • Health physicist conducting radiation survey

    Labor trends report spotlights higher education health physics enrollments and degrees

    One of our most significant labor trends analyses has been tracking enrollments and degrees awarded in health physics for DOE and other federal agencies for more than 50 years. The report includes enrollment information on undergraduate students and graduate students and information by degree level for post-graduation plans.

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  • Anthony Davila, LSU student and VFRP researcher at ORAU

    Researching field-deployable detection tools for radiation medical accidents

    ORAU researchers are testing a novel approach to an uncommon problem using relatively common equipment. That’s the short explanation for a project to determine whether radiation detection devices commonly found in any nuclear medicine suite can be deployed to the scene of a radiation medical accident to determine how far into tissue a piece of nuclear material has been deposited.

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  • Titanium Dioxide

    Validating optimal statistical approach for assessing worker health risks from titanium dioxide exposures

    ORAU contributed to a study examining the effects of occupational exposure to titanium dioxide (TiO2), a white pigment widely used in consumer products, such as sunscreen, cosmetics, paint and plastics.

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  • adult female using virtual reality equipment

    Improving adult vaccine communication, education with virtual reality

    ORAU and the University of Georgia (UGA) partnered in 2017 to study the use of virtual reality and eye-tracking technologies to improve adult vaccine communication and education. ORAU and UGA also used eye-tracking technology to measure participants’ visual attention to vaccination education materials. With this technology, researchers can evaluate the type of content a person chooses to look at and which content the subject views the longest. 

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    Seeking to improve accuracy of radiation dose calculations

    Researchers at ORAU are working to make radiation dose reconstruction more accurate by removing the limit built in to the coding used to made dose calculations.

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Contact us

If you have questions about ORAU's Research partnerships, contact 865.576.1717 or .