- A lot of the students who are in academia, they don't really know about opportunities at national lab. And so like the more we do to create this and those events and moment in time where people can meet and discuss what they're doing and learn from each other, I think it's beneficial to recruiting great talent at the national labs. - [Announcer] 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's 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." - Welcome to another episode of "Further Together, the ORAU Podcast." As ever, I'm your host, Michael Holtz from the Communications and Marketing Department at ORAU, and today we're talking about one of my favorite topics. I love talking about research. I love talking about the research we do at ORAU and with our university partners. And here to talk about all of that is one of my recurring guests, a favorite, Dr. Ken Tobin, Chief Research and University Partnerships Officer for ORAU and Dr. Laurene Tetard from the University of Central Florida. We're gonna talk about some of her work. We're gonna talk about us working in partnership with our university consortium, and wherever the heck else this conversation goes. So Laurene, if you don't mind, first, I'll have you introduce yourself, and just tell us a little bit about who you are. - Sure, so I'm associate professor at the University of Central Florida in the Physics Department and the NanoScience Technology Center. And I used to work at Oak Ridge National Lab with Ken a long time ago. And so now my research at UCF focuses on nanoscale imaging and spectroscopy and it builds up on some work I started also at Oak Ridge National Lab, and we are also doing a lot of work in mentoring and in developing some new partnerships to help our student progress in the world, so- - Awesome, that's all great stuff that we talk about quite often. Ken, you've been here before, but tell us a little bit about who you are. - Sure, so I'm, as you mentioned, Chief Research and University Partnerships Officer, and what that that means, of course, is that my office, which is in the president's office, oversees our university consortium of 152 universities, and we also make links with our own research staff and our subject matter experts on a wide variety of areas of activities and programs and such that we do with our federal customers and programs. And so I think today, the really cool thing about this conversation is that while the University of Central Florida is obviously one of our stellar universities that are members of our consortium and has been for quite some time, I've had, as Laurene mentioned, a long history working with with her when I was at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. And it's interesting, you know, it goes way back and it's just, it's one of those things where you meet people and they move and you have a network and we talk about the value and the importance of networks all the time, but I was actually doing work with the University of Burgundy in Le Creusot, France, for many years. And I don't recall if I actually worked with some of your folks, Laurene, but I do know that you came from that university at Oak Ridge because we had some history as a laboratory working with University of Burgundy and you ended up working in my research division. And the other thing, which she hasn't actually mentioned yet, was she was the recipient of a Eugene P. Wigner fellowship at ORNL which it was, it's a very prestigious fellowship on the work that she does. And hopefully she'll talk a little bit more about that work in a couple of minutes 'cause it's so important. But we were able to kind of run into each other over the last year looking at some opportunities where Laurene is very interested in creating a better and more diversity, equity, inclusion, acceptance opportunities for students, particularly in the areas of physics and associated material science and things. And it just was a perfect opportunity for us to get together and look at how we might be able to help support some of her research and some of her goals and activities and programs that she's going after right now. - Awesome, and you know, we know diversity, equity, inclusion and access are hugely important issues right now. - Absolutely. - Laurene, talk a little bit about that work and what you're endeavoring to do to make physics more diverse, equitable, inclusive and accessible. - Yeah, so when I joined University of Central Florida, I was really happy to find, and that was one of the reasons I chose to come here is that we have a very diverse student population and in diverse in many ways. And so as we started working, there were a lot of discussions in the physics department by some of my senior, in the professor that were more senior at the time, 'cause I was an assistant professor, of how can we make physics more diverse, because the physics department was still very traditional in the sense of always the same people are being recruited, and what can we do to change that, and increase the representation of women, but also of many other groups of students that we couldn't somehow find in our program. And so since 2016 we've been working with the American Physics Society in the Bridge Program which is a special program to recruit minority students in physics and mentor them, and we give them this bridge program gives them one or two years to start, kind of, graduate courses and maybe a mix between undergraduate and graduate courses to strengthen their portfolio. So then they become very competitive to get recruited in other PhD program, either here at UCF or other universities in the U.S. And so we've been doing that now for several years and our students who first started with us when the program was funded, they are now graduating. And now we find that, okay, you know, the problem we've tackled early on in graduate school, now we're discovering new, we're running an experiment, right? We're finding new bottleneck somewhere else. So the question is now you have a PhD or you're getting ready to have a PhD, how do you go about finding a career that is at the level of your degree and your skills? And there are a lot of things that come into play when you come from an environment where you did not grow up in the family of academics or engineers and things and you don't know how to go about things. And so what we find is that networking and connecting people to say that we have all these skills here, we have these excellent students, and then we know other people that are looking for students with these skills we help and we allow them to meet and chat and see if there's a good match. And so that's what we're trying to do. - That sounds like great and very important work, and Ken, she's mentioned, you've said this early on, the word networking, very important to build those relationships, build those bridges with, you know, not just to us, but out to, you know, our university partners to keep the dialogue going between us and our university partners, not just for research, but as, you know, as we're hearing for diversity, equity, inclusion, you know, all of the big things, you know, that we've been focused on for a while. - Mm-hmm, and I think, you know, based on conversations that Laurene and I have had, you know, she's, for example, having success in bringing in students into the department, them getting degrees, and finding opportunities, for example, in the national laboratory system. And these are people who maybe a couple of years ago would've never thought about a career in a national laboratory or that opportunities were out there for them or what that even meant to go and go work at a national laboratory on some area of science. And I think it'd be great if you could tell a little bit about that background, Laurene, and, you know, some of the students that you've worked with that are moving in that way and those fields. - Definitely, so actually we have a student that wouldn't even have thought about a graduate program, right? And they finished a master's degree or a PhD degree in physics. And so we have a few students who went to work for Los Alamos and another one I think is at NIST. And then we have also some students who came out of the program who are working now for Honeywell and Lockheed Martin, and these are excellent students. So they learned the skills of the research they were doing with their advisors and they're able to use that to, you know, benefit important research in our industry and national lab. So we're excited about it. I think they really enjoy the work they're doing and also they bring a new and fresh look at the problems, right, because when you grow up in different environment and you exposed to different worlds, then you also look at problems differently. So that's beneficial for everyone to have more diverse workforce in the- - Yeah, point of view makes a big difference, doesn't it? - Yeah, of course, and also, you know, for the challenges that we're facing in the future. There are new problems. We don't know how to tackle them. So if we have different visions of things, then we can come up with new solutions. And we see that all the time in the research lab here. So it's great to think that now the students will move on to great careers and share that with others. - And have an impact, I mean that's the great thing about exposing students, graduates, undergraduates, to experiences in the labs is they're doing impactful work right out of the gates, right? I mean they're, you know, they're doing research right away, so- - Yeah, so I had a- - and tackling the nation's problems, you know? - To give you an example, I had a graduate, undergraduate student in my lab who was getting experience and she was very good. And when she graduated, she wanted to get some experience before she goes to grad school. So she spent some time at the NIIH and it turns out that she contributed to doing the research on COVID because she was working in the group that was developing vaccine, and at the time that she was there, COVID started, and then her group, because they had the expertise of developing vaccine, did some tests for that. So it's amazing to find that, you know, we are here in our little lab doing experiments to just, you know, give a taste and curiosity to undergrad students to show them that it's possible to do things with that knowledge. And then they two years later go and work on something as important as developing the vaccine for COVID, right? - They're off changing the world already. That is really amazing. Ken, how important is, and I know, we do talk about this all the time, but working with our consortium members, like the University of Central Florida, to make connections to our government agency partners, to provide those opportunities, open those doors, for students of diverse backgrounds, of all backgrounds. But, you know, in particular, because I know it's a focus of ours and for our government agency partners of, you know, expanding the pool. - Yeah, it's incredibly important. I mean the whole purpose of the ORAU consortium is to help our universities do more and, you know, create inroads to those national laboratories and federal customers and partners because they're the ones that are really looking for a skilled, diverse workforce that's gonna help them solve problems that, you know, we haven't even thought of today, in another decade. - Right. - Right. And, of course, you know, the consortium, we do a lot of things to try to seed opportunities for, you know, junior faculty and other researchers, not just within the universities, but coupling them to what we do. So obviously we have our Powe Junior Faculty Awards and we have event sponsorship grants, which we're updating to call Innovation Partnership Grants. I'll talk about that in just a second, and I'll talk about that with respect to Laurene and some opportunities that she is going to be hopefully moving forward with - Awesome. - Our internally funded R and D program, the ODRD program, which is another great way to work and partner with our universities, our annual meeting, virtual campus visits, the partnerships that we are working right now very diligently to set up with our universities. So we're, you know, one of the things that we're doing today, which I think is pretty unique to ORAU, is we're actually building clusters of universities who have interests and skills in certain areas and going after federal contracts with the NIH, with the National Science Foundation, with the Department of Energy, with DOD, with NASA, you know, to go after certain opportunities that would give more opportunities to our universities, and so the partnerships are paramount. That's what my office is all about. That's the foundation of ORAU, you know, back in 1946 when it was formed, it was really pulling universities, at the time from the southeast, together to go after new research opportunities with federal programs and laboratories. And so it's very important, but I do know that Laurene was talking about some opportunities that'll be coming up where she's doing professional development opportunities, maybe webinars, career fairs, and things like that where we can actually work with UCF going forward to help her implement those types of things. And one of those things would be this Innovation Partnerships Grant, which is, historically it's been called the events grant, but we're trying to update that a little bit to really tie more of our ORAU subject matter expert expertise into that process and go forward. But it's a very simple process, granting process, where, for example, Laurene can submit a very simple application and say, I wanna hold a workshop, I wanna hold a career fair, I wanna do something, and I wanna work with you ORAU to do that, and we can give her $4,000 to help pull that together and get that done. It's a very simple process. And so hopefully, Laurene, I'll be getting an application from you pretty soon. - But I can give you- - The great thing is that- The great thing is with that Innovation Partnership Grant- - Yes. - you have the opportunity to touch the lives of students of- - Yep. - you know, academic partners of, potentially, government agencies and in a different way from, you know, sort of some of the, you know, the consortium, but you know, in a, how do I wanna say this? For some folks it may be a first touch to- - Sure. - building those relationships. And so if we can provide the seed money to spark someone's interest in a particular topic or a job fair or the opportunity to meet government partners, all of those things, you know, I know are kind on the table, so- - It's really one of those things- - It's a great way to sort of start that funnel process of come this way. - Yes. - We have, I think, a lot of the students who are in academia, they don't really know about opportunities at national lab. And so, like, the more we do to create this and those events and moment in time where people can meet and discuss what they're doing and learn from each other, I think it's beneficial to recruiting great talent at the national labs. - And Laurene, I just wanna put out there that as your students are having those experiences and working from national labs and the government agencies, I would love to talk about them on the podcast. - Sure. - Because it's always, and we do that with, you know, a number of our programs, but it helps to, again, it helps other students maybe who aren't in Central Florida who might be, you know, in Idaho or you know, Los Angeles, and again, don't have experience with the national labs, but maybe they've got an interest in a topic that one of your students is working on. We can help spread the word, put a name with, you know, a face with the agency and say, this is an opportunity that's available, let's talk about it, and again, you know, lots of young people, young scientists, don't think about the national labs. So if we're helping with that conversation, it benefits everybody. - Yeah, that'll be great. Also, I think there a lot of opportunities for students at the national lab for summer programs at undergraduate and graduate level. And not a lot of students take advantage of that, again, because maybe REU programs from the NSF are something that is discussed a lot, but it is our fault, right? Because we showcase REUs all the time, it's something close to us, but then we don't talk as much about SULI or other programs for summer, and- - Well, I will tell you, I mean, we encourage, and I think you're obviously familiar with the Zintellect website or the ORISE GO app for your phone. I mean all of those internships are there. We just gotta get the kids to wanna look there, to understand what that means, and to know that they could get one of those pretty, you know, easily as it goes. - But also for them to not think that they're not good enough to apply is a big- - Absolutely. - Right. Right. - That's right. - And that's where their personal connection is important because once they talk to people who are recruiting for those internship and they hear from them directly that they're very interested and, oh, your profile is so good, then it changes everything. - Absolutely. Laurene, I know we're a little bit up against a time stop, but I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about your specific research and the work that you're doing with light matter interactions and all of that. So talk a little bit about the work that you're doing. - Sure, so my group is trying to do two things. One is use tools that are combining nanoscale imaging and light or other way of exciting the system to study what a complex system like a cell or a plant cell or even right now we have a project that is starting with Oak Ridge to look at how polymers that you're developing for 3D printing are behaving as they're being deposited in the heat and the cool and what is happening at the small scale that will affect the mechanical property of the parts that you're printing, things like that. So we want to see how we can use the existing tool to study this type of system. But then when we do that, we come across some challenges that the tool cannot do this measurement. So then we try to think how to modify the tool to make it do what we want it to do. So, for instance, we have a big program that is starting, that is funded by the Moore Foundation, where we want to use the nanoscale tip to machine material to give it specific property at the very, very small scale, and then use that recipe to pattern a big array of those little, little defect. And if we can pattern those arrays, we can then tweak the property of the material at the larger scale. But to do that machining, we need to control the environment and we need to monitor what is happening in the material as we are modifying it so that we have this precise control, and all of this is not possible at that scale right now. So we are trying to build a team where we are able to do the characterization before, after, but also do it as we're modifying the material and try to find some recipes to modify the material to give interesting defect for catalysis application, for quantum information, for nano electronics, all different application. And I would say that the training I got when I was at Oak Ridge National Lab has been a big part of all the work I've done until now because the greatest benefit I had from being at Oak Ridge is that I was one of the only graduate students in the lab with Thomas Thundat at the time, and I had my own setup and I could change it, modify it, tweak it, run it all the time. And you know, at the university we have to share equipment a lot. So there I was able to really make it my own and spend all kinds of time to change things and tweak it and things. And then we're surrounding with a lot of scientists that are still in the lab and have huge experience in their field, and I really learned a lot from that. And so I think that doing my PhD research there and then the fellowship there, it has given me a really strong foundation. And so that's why I also want to share that with my students now and try to convince them to go do some research at user facilities or with collaborators at national labs so they can also see that academic research is a little bit different from national lab research, but there's some really good things that then come out of, kind of, combining the two. - Absolutely, and you can solve problems and answer questions and do big things. - Yeah. - Do big things at the nano scale. - At the nano scale, that's right. So Laurene, if I may ask, in terms of looking at, you know, for defects in the polymers and that, is that to ultimately benefit the construction, to make the products longer lasting, all of the above? - I think for the polymer project we have, it is not really as much making defect. It's really using the tool to understand what's happening in the polymer when it is going through all the different transition of the printing process. And then if you can understand, for instance, you have two phases and then the region between those two phases is critical to what's gonna happen in the big scale of the material. And so if we can go and probe what is happening at the interface like that, that would give great feedback to people who are synthesizing the material and tweaking the chemistry. I cannot do chemistry, so I cannot tell anything about it. I understand just that it's very important for them to know that. And so in that case, you know, it's more of looking at the material and understanding how it behaves. In the case of defect, defect making is more that tweaking the property of the defect so that we can locally change how the electronic density will be arranged. And by doing that, then we can create a favorable site for a chemical reaction. For instance, you can think about CO2 capture and conversion or methane capture and conversion, or you, if you can create a defect that has a special spin, then you become, you produce a platform that's interesting for qubits or for quantum sensing. So we're not really tied to the application, more to how can we figure out the tools so that we can enable these things and then so if we have the tool that can do this nano machining, then maybe it will spark some idea for somebody else that can do their own type of defect for some application of their dream, you know? - Gotcha. That makes perfect sense. That's great. Well, thank you so much for sharing about your research and what you're doing. It sounds incredibly interesting and I hope we can come back and talk more about it at some point when you have, you know, more people and understanding, you know, sort of where things are happening. - Yeah, sure. And then maybe next time I come with my students so they can tell you- - Yeah! Heck, yeah! - all their great work they're doing. - That'd be fantastic, yes. - We would love that, absolutely. So, Ken, any closing thoughts before we wrap things up? - Oh, I think Laurene said it all, you know, we're gonna continue to work with not just UCF but all of our universities, but I think she's just a great example of the kinds of impact that, you know, we, being the universities and 501c3 like us who's interested in developing STEM talent, you know, that what kind of directions we're trying to go and how these things can work together in a positive way from time to time. So- - Absolutely. - That's really all I have to say other than thanks. Thank you very much, Laurene, for doing what you're doing, and please keep up the good fight. - Absolutely. And come back. Come back again and we'll talk some more. I'd love to. - Sure. - All right. Thank you so much, both of you. Have a great day. - You, too. Bye-bye. - You, too. Bye. - [Announcer] 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, at ORAU and on Instagram at ORAUTOGETHER. If you like "Further Together, the ORAU Podcast," we would appreciate you giving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews will help more people find the podcast.