This is the ORISE FeatureCast. Join host Michael Holtz for conversations with ORISE experts on STEM workforce development, scientific and technical reviews, and the evaluation of radiation exposure and environmental contamination. You’ll also hear from ORISE research program participants and their mentors as they talk about their experiences and how they are helping shape the future of science. Welcome to the ORISE Featurecast.
A mentor can make or break a student's time: A conversation with Lindsey Perkin, Ph.D., USDA ARS scientist
We celebrate mentorship in this episode of the ORISE Featurecast in a conversation with Lindsey Perkin, Ph.D, research molecular biologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service. Perkins’s unit focuses on insect pests of cotton and other row crops. She says mentors can make or break a student's experience in a lab or other opportunity. It’s important to guide people in the right way, to give them that good experience. If they have a bad experience, that might completely change the trajectory of what they plan to do in their career and they could leave science altogether.
Learn more about ORISE opportunities at USDA ARS: https://orise.orau.gov/usda-ars/index.html
12 Aug 2026
ORISE Symposium 2026 Preview: James Dewar, Ph.D., says treat every AI prompt like an experiment
James Dewar, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry at Vanderbilt University, uses Large Language Models (LLMs, a type of generative artificial intelligence) in his research. In a recent article published at nature.com, Dewar writes that to get more from AI researchers should treat every prompt like an experiment. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, Dewar talks in more depth about his article and gives a preview of his upcoming ORISE Symposium Seminar on the use of LLMs for science and research. He also discusses and shares some of the tools he has developed to help students and researchers better understand how to use LLMs effectively.
For more information and to register for the ORISE Symposium, visit https://orise.orau.gov/news/events/symposium.html
Read Dewar’s Nature Careers article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02083-6
Some of the links mentioned in the conversation are listed below:
Papers showing AI automating the early stages of drug discovery
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10644-y
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10652-y
Paper comparing AI to physicians at clinical reasoning
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz4433
Preprint from Dewar on AI use for scientists: https://zenodo.org/records/19177101
Preprint from Dewar on how to teach with AI: https://osf.io/preprints/edarxiv/t8mea
Dewar’s personal website with free tools: https://www.jmdewar.com/
This is the specific meta prompt tool he mentions: https://prompting.jmdewar.com/meta
Links not mentioned in the Featurecast but that may be of interest:
Dewar’s ORCID and Linkedin:
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4153-3818
https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-m-dewar/
Links to the graduate biomedical programs at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/igp/igp-program-overview/
https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/qcb/qcb-program-overview/
9 Jul 2026
The importance of interdisciplinary research about crayfish: A conversation with Hampton Kennedy
Hampton Kennedy was between jobs when he came across an opportunity for the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service Research Participation Program Fellowship. The fellowship blended history – Hampton is a history teacher – and ecology in that it focused on the history of signal crayfish in Montana. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, Hampton talks about the process of investigating the history of signal crayfish. Few studies had been done prior to this project, but determining whether signal crayfish are a native species or were introduced affects how ecologists manage their presence. Hampton found mentions of crayfish in the journals of explorers Lewis and Clark, and thought his work was done, but the reference wasn’t of the creature in question. Hampton and his mentor, Susan Adams, Ph.D., published a paper on their research, which can be found here: https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wat2.70014
Who has been a guest on ORISE Featurecast
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Zachary Minchow-Proffitt
Ralph Pantozzi
Dr Sharon Sikora
Rebecca Masline
Joshua Hayes
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Michael Holtz host the show. Published by Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.
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