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 170+ 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 175 Preparing to study the moon's terrain: A conversation with Jordan Bretzfelder, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Backpack-mounted LIDAR systems are laser-ranging devices that can create very high definition 3D terrain maps. Jordan Bretzfelder, Ph.D., was very early in her tenure as a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow when she was set to embark on a trip to California's Death Valley to use LIDAR on the dunes there. The Death Valley trip served as an analog for future expeditions to the moon and to Mars. LIDAR can map terrain in places without light, which will be useful to map the polar regions of the moon and other interesting topographies. In this episode, Bretzfelder discusses her research at the Marshall Space Flight Center, how she got interested in science and the path that led her to NASA. Listen in for a fun and interesting conversation!

To learn more about the NASA Postdoctoral Program, visit https://npp.orau.org/.

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Episode 174 Meharry Medical College's Cancer Survivorship Summit: An Innovation Partnership Grant Story

In April 2024, Meharry Medical College received an ORAU Innovation Partnership Grant to help students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the Nashville area attended Meharry’s annual Cancer Survivorship Summit. The summit was a day-long event focused on sharing information about cancer risks, research, and prevention and early detection; and provided opportunities for community members to get needed health and medical screenings. In this conversation, host Michael Holtz talks with the team from Meharry that helped make the summit possible. Also joining the conversation is Robert Briggs, a senior majoring in business management at Lemoyne-Owen College, who is one of the students able to attend the summit because of the ORAU IPG grant.

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Episode 173 How the world benefits from Emory University's history of research and technology transfer

Emory University has been a member of the ORAU University Consortium since it was established in 1946, and has a long and storied history of research. Last year, Emory's research primarily focused on biomedical research, global health, brain health, artificial intelligence and more. Emory also has a robust technology transfer office, where drugs and devices developed through research make their way to the marketplace. Host Michael Holtz talks to Kimberly Eck, MPH, Ph.D., associate vice president of research, and Todd Sherer, Ph.D., associate vice president of research and executive director of the Office of Technology Transfer, about the importance of research and tech transfer.

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Episode 172 From artist to investigating the terrain of one of Saturn's moons: Joey Pasterski, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Joey Pasterski, Ph.D., is not your traditional scientist. He took piano and voice and avoided science at all costs until he went back to school in his later twenties. Today, Pasterski is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow researching laser desorption mass spectrometry for the Dragonfly mission, which will land a rotorcraft on various locations on Titan, Saturn's moon. During this conversation, Pasterski talks to host Michael Holtz about why studying Titan is important, how the moon is like a bizarro earth, and how the trajectory of his life changed when he discovered a love for science.

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Episode 171 Using augmented reality to improve breast cancer biopsies: A conversation with Alycen Wiacek, Ph.D.

More than a million breast biopsies are performed annually in the United States, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The need to ensure diagnostic accuracy is great. Alycen Wiacek, Ph.D., motivated by the impact breast cancer has had on her family and a desire to make a difference, is conducting research to help make biopsies more accurate through engineering and augmented reality. In this episode of Further Together, host Matthew Underwood and Abbey Becker talk to Wiacek about her research. Wiacek is an assistant professor at Oakland University. In her lab, the Medical Acoustics for Global Health Imaging and Clinical Translation (MAGIC), she and her students are developing a system that integrates various imaging modalities into AR to assist in the targeted biopsy of breast masses. This approach with AR means images and information can be displayed directly in the physician’s field of view to better guide the biopsy process. Her research is supported by an ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award in partnership with the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA).

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Previous Episodes

Ken Tobin, chief research officer, and Cathy Fore, senior director of university partnerships, sit down with hosts Michael Holtz and Abbey Becker to discuss the state of research at ORAU. As an institution, ORAU has its hands in more research than ever before, involving our own subject matter experts, as well as that of our government agency partners and our university consortium members. This episode includes discussion of recent research successes and the matchmaking that Fore does to increase the value proposition for consortium members. We discuss ORAU's current research priorities and the topics of recently awarded ORAU-Directed Research and Development projects. We also do a quick wrap up of the 2024 annual meeting, which focused on STEM education and look ahead to the 2025 meeting and its focus on advanced manufacturing.

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Ali Alqaraghuli, Ph.D., was just about to start his NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship when he was interviewed by Further Together host Michael Holtz. Alqaraghuli's research focuses on the ASTHROS balloon-born telescope. The focus of ASTHROS is to place the telescope over the Antarctic to gather and better understand how stars form. Alqaraghuli is developing a portable test bed to help calibrate the antenna and the telescope. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Los Angeles, scientists have all the facilities they need to test and track and adjust things if needed. "Once we ship everything to Antarctica, we're kind of a bit limited on what equipment is available, and things of that nature. So my main project really is to develop like a portable test bed that we can take with us to Antarctica that basically can do just as good of a job as if we were to have all these big fancy machines in the JPL Center," he says.

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The U.S. Surgeon General says Americans are confronting an epidemic of loneliness. About half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness, and that was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Loneliness has physical health consequences, and impacts work performance, academic achievement and our overall mental health. Additionally, the Surgeon General has warned that the stress of caring for children has an impact on our mental health. Many members of Generation X may be caring for children or again parents or both, and the stress of caregiving has impacts on mental health as well. In this episode of Further Together, hosts Michael Holtz and Matthew Underwood talk to Jennifer Reynolds, senior manager of health communication, marketing, and promotion and Kristin Mattson, senior health education specialist. Both work in ORAU's Public Health and Healthcare Program. Throughout this episode, the hosts and guests discuss the problems, contributing factors, their lived experience, and where ORAU has done work to better understand and provide solutions.

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As Baby Boomers continue to age -- and let's be real Generation X isn't far behind -- healthy aging and how to care for this population will be critical. Elaine Jurkowski, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Southern Illinois Carbondale, received an ORAU Innovation Partnership Programs grant to host a day-long event called Destination Healthy Aging. The continuing education event for health care workers addressed caregiving, addressed the caregiver, addressed our workforce, talked about life after caregiving, talked about building communities that would be inclusive and age friendly for caregiving. We also addressed person-centered care and caregiving in place. That is, people remain in their own home and we figure out ways to strengthen the caregivers, so that they can do that job in helping that loved one stay in their home for as long as possible and even, hopefully, till they transition from this life. In this episode of Further Together, host Michael Holtz talks to Jurkowski and student GeVonna Fassett about the Destination Healthy Aging event, including how they decided to launch a program and the topic and what the impact was.

Listen to Episode 167 Transcript for Episode 167
Lakshya Sharma is student coordination manager for the Resource Center of Excellence Greater Atlanta, one of dozens of such centers around the world working to advance the United Nations' sustainable development goals. An ORAU Innovation Partnership Grant was awarded to RCE Greater Atlanta and Georgia Tech to help fund an Urban Horticulture and Permaculture Workshop, which brought together students from Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Georgia State, Morehouse College, Spelman College and other institutions across the Atlanta area. In this episode of Further Together, Sharma talks to host Michael Holtz and guest host Tracie Curtright from ORAU's Research and University Partnerships Office about the workshop. Sharma says students learned to incorporate plant life into their daily lives by gardening where they are. Sharma says the series of workshops also focused on the mental health benefits of caring for and having plants in your physical environment. Curtright shared details about the IPG program, and how ORAU's university partners can apply to use these $4,000 grants to grow attendance and dissemination of events like the one Sharma and his team organized.

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View the full Further Together Podcast Archive

Further Together, the ORAU podcast

Latest Episodes

Episode 175 Preparing to study the moon's terrain: A conversation with Jordan Bretzfelder, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Episode 174 Meharry Medical College's Cancer Survivorship Summit: An Innovation Partnership Grant Story

Episode 173 How the world benefits from Emory University's history of research and technology transfer

Episode 172 From artist to investigating the terrain of one of Saturn's moons: Joey Pasterski, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Episode 171 Using augmented reality to improve breast cancer biopsies: A conversation with Alycen Wiacek, Ph.D.

Previous Episodes

Episode 170: The state of research at ORAU, and a look ahead to our 2025 annual meeting

Episode 169: A polar vortex, Antarctica and a balloon-borne telescope: A conversation with Ali Alqaraghuli, NASA NPP Fellow

Episode 168: Under Pressure: An epidemic of loneliness, a parental/caregiver stress crisis, contributing factors and how ORAU is helping

Episode 167: Destination Healthy Aging: An ORAU Innovation Partnership Program story

Episode 166: Exploring the benefits of incorporating plants into daily life: An ORAU Innovation Partnership Grant story

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