Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE)

Register TODAY for our summer STEM courses! ORISE offers a variety of STEM opportunities to equip educators with valuable STEM skills and learning experiences. Our K-12 teacher programs allow educators to research alongside our nation’s leading scientists, explore STEM curriculum resources, and strengthen their classroom instruction.

The research project of Connel Ching’anda, Ph.D, is focused on comparing the performance of different commercial biocontrol products that mitigate aflatoxin contamination of Texas corn. A native of the Republic of Malawi, a country in Southeastern Africa, Ching’anda saw firsthand the struggle of farmers to produce crops.

Justice, senior manager with ORISE STEM WD, was honored with the 2025 Good Scout Award for her significant contributions to scouting and the community, her passion for giving back, and her impactful work in supporting educational programs.

Gene Peters is the chief of Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research at the FBI Laboratory in Virginia, where he leads research staff to develop new capabilities in, improve existing methods for, and strengthen the foundations and defensibility of science applied to forensic, counterterrorism, and intelligence challenges. His team's research spans forensic aspects of anthropology, molecular biology, analytical chemistry, genetics, geology, microbiology, statistics, toxicology, and physical sciences involving pattern evidence. In this episode of the ORISE Featurecast, Peters discusses the importance of the FBI Visiting Scientist Research Program. He also discusses how many of the researcher that join him have been inspired by what they see on shows like "CSI." For Peters, his TV inspiration was "Quincy MD." He says that while that TV show didn't actually spur an interest specifically in forensics, it did spur an interest in using science to solve problems.