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 200+ episodes of Further Together on Blubrry. You can also find Further Together on the Apple Podcasts app, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and more.

Latest Episodes

Episode 214 Geeks of the world, unite!: A conversation with Gabe Grell, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Gabe Grell, Ph.D., is a self-described geek. He is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow focused on high-energy astrophysics, which involves observing some of the most powerful objects in the universe, including massive stars (10 to 20 times bigger than our sun), black holes, galaxies and supernovae, all of which emit very strong radiation in the form of X-rays. Grell analyzed the data received from satellites measuring these X-rays to deduce the atomic makeup and physical properties of those objects. Grell says he has always been kind of a math and science geek and began taking an interest in astronomy in high school. He majored in astrophysics and physics at Harvard University, then pursued his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland College Park.

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Episode 213 Studying clouds on the sun: A conversation with Veronika Jercic, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Veronika Jercic, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. She studies structures in the solar atmosphere known as prominences or filaments. Jercic calls them clouds on the sun. These clouds are important to understand stretch through all of sun’s atmospheric layers. Unlike the clouds on Earth, these clouds are much denser, so they're very heavy clouds and colder than the Corona in which they are situated. These clouds occasionally erupt, expelling huge masses of particles and energy into the interplanetary space, which see them as the Northern Lights. These energy masses can also impact satellite transmissions, which negatively affect our technologically driven world.

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Episode 212 A 6-year-old's dream of becoming a physicist came true: A conversation with Maurice Roots, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow

Maurice Roots, Ph.D., was six years old when he watched “Star Trek” and decided to be a physicist. His dream came true and today he is an atmospheric physicist in the NASA Postdoctoral Program researching atmospheric chemistry and dynamics at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Specifically, Roots focuses on ozone, which is one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s six critical pollutants. He says we need to measure and be concerned about ozone because of the health risks associated with how ozone impacts air quality and breathing it in, adding that ozone isn’t directly emitted from anything specific but formed in the air secondarily. Roots discusses why his research is important, what it means for all of us, and the career and education path that led him to NASA.

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Episode 211 Meeting the need for skilled trades workers in the nuclear energy industry: ORAU's Pathway to Trades Summit

Oak Ridge is at the nexus of the nuclear energy renaissance. One of the challenges is meeting the demand for the necessary workforce, and not just the scientific and technical workforce but the skilled trades workers needed to build out and operate the small modular reactors and other facilities that are coming. On Thursday, May 14, ORAU is hosting the Pathway to Trades Summit, which will convene industry, trade unions, academia, government and other key players to begin to solve for meeting this important need. Laura Hammons, strategic programs and operations manager for the ORAU STEM Accelerator and key organizer of the summit, sits down with Michael Holtz to discuss why the Summit is important, what participants can expect, and what she hopes will happen next.

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Episode 210 Take to the bed, bring a cake and remember your value: A conversation with Naomi Asher, the Maven

If you take anything away from this podcast episode, Naomi Asher wants you to know you are enough, you are worthy and you have value. In this episode of Further Together, Naomi and host Michael Holtz talk about career burnout, the need for rest and recovery, and finding yourself in the process. Naomi is the author of the book, “Take to the Bed (And Bring a Cake),” about the importance of giving yourself permission to rest when life gets overwhelming (and life gets overwhelming at times), evaluate whether what you do and how you present yourself to the world aligns with who you are, and make adjustments as necessary. This conversation takes place in the context of the wide variety of career opportunities that exist in the growing nuclear energy industry in East Tennessee. Be trained in a trade, get a community college education, make a mid- to late-career shift that better aligns with your values – the possibilities are endless.

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Previous Episodes

Ricardo Branco, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His research focuses on the development of detectors that can detect infrared or thermal radiation from very cold bodies throughout the solar system – think Uranus or the moon. Capturing the infrared radiation allows scientists to detect the chemical composition and other aspects of the body they are studying. Branco is a native of Brazil who has been interested in science since childhood. As a kid Branco wanted to be a doctor but fell in love with physics in high school. The rest, as they say, is history. While he never dreamed he’d be at NASA, he is excited about his research and the potential it holds to be part of future NASA flagship missions to orbit Uranus.

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Kirtan Dixit, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow in the second year of his fellowship at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He is part of the high-energy astrophysics, high-energy optics group on advances X-ray optics for future space telescopes. His research focuses on designing and fabricating multilayer mirror coating that can efficiently reflect hard X-rays. In this interview, he tells guest host Amber Davis that X-ray optical coatings are useful for focusing X-rays so that astrophysicists can make some sense out of it and can understand the underlying physics happening at high temperatures in the universe. For scientists who might want to pursue a NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship, Kirtan recommends cultivating a deep curiosity about a problem that genuinely matters to you.

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Greg Nichols is operations manager in the ORAU health studies program, but he wears a lot of hats. He has become an expert in artificial intelligence and received an ORAU Thought Leadership Research Award to write a chapter on the convergence of AI and biotechnology. Nichols’s chapter, “Assessing Governance and Regulatory Frameworks for Converging Technologies: The Case of Artificial Intelligence in Biological Engineering and Design Technologies,” appears in Biotechnology and AI: Technological Convergence and Information Hazards. He says that While biotechnologies are somewhat better regulated and monitored compared to other technologies, artificial intelligence is not, and the combination of these two is certainly not explicitly or fully covered by most existing regulations or risk governance framework. This was an insightful and thought-provoking conversation.

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The annual Waste Management Symposia is the premier international conference concerning the safe and secure management of radioactive wastes arising from nuclear operations, facility decommissioning and environmental remediation, as well as storage, transportation and disposal, and associated activities. A team of ORAU subject matter experts will be attending this year’s event. In this episode of Further Together, Kathy Rollow, senior director for Energy and International Strategy, and Chelsea Hill, manager of Workforce Solutions, discuss why Waste Management 2026 is an important opportunity for ORAU to share its capabilities with leading agencies, industries and experts in the nuclear energy sector.

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Kelly Whalen, Ph.D., studies black holes and how they interact with galaxy growth as part of her research for the NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Whalen says there are a lot of misconceptions about black holes because of pop culture and science fiction depictions. There are different kinds of black holes, and they are not gigantic forces of destruction. She tells Further Together, the ORAU Podcast that black holes can also create by forming new stars. Whalen says being selected for the NASA NPP program is a dream come true and looks forward to continuing her research.

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View the full Further Together Podcast Archive

Further Together, the ORAU podcast

Latest Episodes

Episode 214 Geeks of the world, unite!: A conversation with Gabe Grell, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Episode 213 Studying clouds on the sun: A conversation with Veronika Jercic, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Fellow

Episode 212 A 6-year-old's dream of becoming a physicist came true: A conversation with Maurice Roots, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow

Episode 211 Meeting the need for skilled trades workers in the nuclear energy industry: ORAU's Pathway to Trades Summit

Episode 210 Take to the bed, bring a cake and remember your value: A conversation with Naomi Asher, the Maven

Previous Episodes

Episode 209: Dreaming in space: A conversation with Ricardo Branco, Ph.D., NASA NPP Fellow

Episode 208: Cultivate your curiosity: A conversation with Kirtan Dixit, Ph.D., NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow

Episode 207: Information hazards of the AI and biotechnology convergence: A conversation with Greg Nichols

Episode 206: Sharing our capabilities on an international level: ORAU and the 2026 Waste Management Symposia

Episode 205: Being selected for the NASA Postdoctoral Program is a dream come true for Kelly Whalen, Ph.D.

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