ORAU aims to boost its scientific research

Oak Ridge Associated Universities is “a service organization but it’s very strong in science and technology,” said Ken Tobin, chief research and university partnerships officer at ORAU since 2020 and a former researcher and leader at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

In a recent lecture to Friends of ORNL, he said that 4% of ORAU’s work has “a research flavor” and that the goal he has set with the organization is to grow the scientific research program to 10% of the program budget over the next five years.

“We do research with universities and government agencies with which we have partnerships, and we create and support a healthy and productive research culture at ORAU,” Tobin said.

He added that he is using his research and leadership experiences at ORNL to help scientific ORAU staff in the early- to mid-career stages “who are technically capable of doing great work to get the opportunities to grow and achieve success.”

For more than 75 years, ORAU has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy and other government agencies to advance national priorities in science, education, workforce development, public health, worker health and safety, environmental and climate research, emergency preparedness and response and national security.

The beginning of ORAU

ORAU got its start as the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies, which was incorporated by the state of Tennessee on Oct. 17, 1946. On the same day, ORINS hosted the first-ever meeting of the Council of Sponsoring Institutions, which included representatives from 14 Southern research universities.

Today ORAU is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, federal contractor and consortium of 153 universities, said Tobin. When he first assumed the position three years ago, ORAU had 143 universities. Of the 153 universities, 128 have Ph.D. programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, and 25 universities are associate members (smaller universities that are growing their research and graduate programs).

The original purpose of ORINS, which was renamed ORAU in 1966, was to provide access to ORNL researchers and facilities by the faculty and students at member universities across the South. ORINS also provided access by ORNL researchers to University of Tennessee faculty. ORINS was developed and first led by UT faculty member William G. Pollard from a suggestion by ORNL physicist Katharine Way.

Presenting “ORAU by the numbers,” Tobin said ORAU has 965 employees in Oak Ridge, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and 22 other locations nationally; annual revenue of $409 million; 36 state and federal customers and 9,594 annual participants - that is, university professors, students, science teachers and others whose careers are enhanced by ORAU’s capability to place them in or connect them with national laboratories and federal agencies.

ORAU’s research partnerships are with the DOE, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Agriculture, Defense and Health and Human Services (including the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC), and other state and federal agencies.

He noted that ORAU has strategic partnerships with member universities and federal agencies and continues to create new opportunities for research partnerships. For example, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency recently awarded ORAU the lead in communications, technical assistance and training. For the CDC, ORAU was awarded the lead for the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities in support of the health and well-being of our nation’s most vulnerable populations.

ORAU and 62 of its member universities are performing research with 13 centers of the Veterans Housing Administration on its initiative to protect against veteran suicide.

ORAU supports the Y-12 National Security Complex by providing university engagement with the research led by Consolidated Nuclear Security, the Y-12 management contractor, and with the work of the new CNS-managed Oak Ridge Enhanced Technology and Training Center.

Speaking on the partnership between ORNL and ORAU and the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), which ORAU manages for DOE, Tobin listed several innovative programs initiated in the past 13 years. The Graduate Education for Minorities (GEM) program was launched in 2010. The ORISE online applicant management system (Zintellect) for university faculty and graduate students started up in 2014. ORAU established a next-generation STEM internship program in 2018.

Tobin said he has been and will be meeting with associate lab directors at ORNL, some of whom he knew well during his ORNL days, to keep them informed of ORAU activities and opportunities for additional collaborative work.

ORISE will be providing summer school courses on artificial intelligence, which is important to Tobin because of his many years of AI research at ORNL. There he employed computer vision and machine learning for improving semiconductor manufacturing and helping save the eyesight of thousands of people manifesting the early signs of diabetic retinopathy.

ON TUESDAY: Read about Tobin and other people's research in the 1990s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory involving AI that is behind technology now being used to help save people's eyesights.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: ORAU aims to boost its scientific research