Kam Manuel:
Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the National Public Viewing Event for the 2023 ORISE Ignite Off! Competition. My name is Kam Manuel and I'm an education project manager at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education or ORISE for short. I support ORISE programs with the United States Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development, and I'm also one of the co-leads for this event. ORISE is a Department of Energy, DOE asset dedicated to enabling critical scientific research and health initiatives of DOE in its laboratory system. This includes managing a dynamic set of workforce development programs, including internships and fellowships, as well as hosting professional development activities just like the 2023 All ORISE Ignite Off! Competition. Today is the exciting finale of our competition and you'll have an opportunity to look at all of the finalists with their Ignite Talk videos and we will reveal our first and second place winners.
At the end of the viewing, you, our live audience will have the opportunity to vote for your favorite video to select the fan favorite. Now these finalists are ORISE interns and fellows from five ORISE federal sponsors. They will each present on their research projects at federal laboratories and agencies in key areas that both impact and advance their federal sponsors' mission and the future of our nation's scientific community. Now, before we get started, let me take a moment to recognize these sponsors beginning with the Department of Energy and all of the other sponsoring agencies that have supported the contestants throughout both our semifinals and the finalists that you will get to hear from today. Those 10 sponsors are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Department of Defense, the United States Department of Energy, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States Food and Drug Administration.
Of course, you can see all of the logos on the screen now and we want to thank so much all of those sponsors that participated and allowed these interns and fellows to present. We could not host this event without that support and we truly appreciate it. I also want to thank the principal investigators and mentors of these contestants for ensuring a great experience for our participants and helping ensure that we will have an incredible impact on the future of STEM. These learning experiences really can change the future of ORISE interns and fellows, and that is what we hope to see for our ORISE participants. Now, there were lots of behind-the-scene activities to get all of this ready for today, and we don't need to get into those details, but I do want to thank our entire Ignite Off! team, our panel of national judges, and of course, a huge thank you to everyone that has joined us for today's event.
Now let me introduce you to two of my ORISE colleagues and co-leads on the All ORISE Ignite Off! Competition. Will White is an associate manager supporting ORISE programs at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He will also be our co-host for today and Jackie Aquino, a project manager supporting ORISE programs at the Department of Defense. Will and Jackie have been wonderful co-leads and I thank them for all of their hard work on this incredible event. With that, Will, I turn it over to you.

Will White:
Thank you Kam, and welcome everyone to the 2023 all ORISE final event. So we are thrilled to be here today. It's culmination of a lot of hard work from the team that you see on the screen, the ORISE Participant Experience Team co-led by Kam, myself and Jackie, but also the hard work of our contestants, including our 10 finalists who we'll get to later in the presentation. Before we move on into the presentations, I just want to take a little bit time to talk about the participant experience team, what we do, introduce you to Ignite Talks and talk a little bit about this year's competition. So the participant experience team, we are charged with the goal of providing our participants with best in class developmental resources and opportunities, including making this competition and event possible. So if you're not familiar with Ignite Talks, simply put, they're a form of presentation.
It's an informal type of presentation. However, it's still highly structured. It lasts only five minutes. It's made up of 20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds. So that means that our contestants had no control over their own slides, so that means that they had to memorize each of their scripts and deliver those in a polished and engaging manner. Just made the task that much more difficult. So Ignite Talks, as I mentioned, are meant to be informal with slides containing more images than text. So you may see animations or memes which might be less suitable for formal presentations, but they're completely acceptable for the Ignite Talk format. So in this style, the focus is truly on the presenter and their ability to deliver the message, thus making an Ignite Talk is a perfect professional development activity for our participants.
So a little bit about this competition. The Ignite Off! Competition started a few years ago as a challenge between the Oak Ridge National Lab and another one of the DOE Network labs. However, last year the competition grew and was open to the entire ORISE network and all of our sponsors. This year's competition was no different. We started with an application process that saw nearly 100 applications submitted. From those, 50 semifinalists were selected to compete in a total of five different events. Now those semifinalists represented nine of our federal sponsors and dozens of individual programs. Now the top two, as I mentioned from each of those semifinal rounds moved on and we'll get to those 10 finalists in just a moment. Again, this year we have our fan favorite vote. Next slide, please. As you're watching these finalist videos, I want you to bear in mind that it's not about necessarily the science, but rather the presentation skills and the crafting of the presentation itself.
So if you'll go ahead and log into menti.com, you can follow along with the presentations and feel free to cast your vote at the end. Now, I hope you find the presentations as informative and entertaining as I have. And without further ado, we present this year's finalists.

Madie Addis:
Hello, my name is Madie Addis and I'm a participant in the Energy Storage Interchip Program from the EERE Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office. This summer I've been working at the National Renewable Energy Lab and today I'll be talking about the sustainability of battery technologies. To start, I want to highlight that batteries are vital to the success of the global energy transition. However, current materials used in battery technologies have severe environmental impacts. Through continued research though, alternative, more sustainable materials will become viable options. With those three points in mind, I want to answer this overarching question, how can we decrease the environmental impact of battery technologies? By the end of this presentation, I want everyone to understand the criticality of answering this question and one method by which it could be addressed.
First though, let's talk about the decarbonization of our world, the decarbonization of all things energy production and transportation. In order to combat the effects of climate change, maximizing renewably sourced energy production and usage is critical. However, solar and wind energy technologies are reliant on the presence of sun and wind, which are intermittent and not always tied to energy use patterns. This is why batteries are so important because they can allow for continuous supply of energy no matter the weather. In the world of batteries, lithium ion batteries or LIBs dominate the industry. LIBs have high energy density, meaning they can store a lot of energy per unit mass and they're found in cell phones, laptops, electric vehicles, and a variety of other products. LIBs consist of one or multiple lithium ion cells and the cell is made up of three primary components, the anode, the separator, and the cathode. Unfortunately, within each of these components, there are materials that have harmful effects associated with their retrieval and processing. Some of these include cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese, and graphite.
Exploring the social and environmental impacts of each of these materials is important, but today I'll be specifically focusing on graphite. Looking back at the battery cell diagram, you'll see that graphite is found in the anode of the cell. Within the anode, it is organized in graphene sheets and this organization allows ions to easily insert themselves between layers and transfer electronic charge. The catch with graphite though is that it is completely derived from petroleum residues. Still, graphite makes up 25% of a lithium ion battery and with continuous growth in battery utilizing industries, graphite is in extremely high demand. So if we are to rely on batteries to support the global energy transition, it is counterproductive for battery materials to rely on fossil fuels. Thus, alternative materials are essential and biomass offers a unique, innovative, and exciting solution. Through pyrolysis processing, which is just decomposition at super high temperatures, biomass like algae, for example, can be used and broken down into an elemental carbon material called hard carbon.
Hard carbon and graphite are different in planal alignment. At lower temperatures, they do have similar organization, but as temperature rises, graphite becomes increasingly aligned while hard carbon maintains a disorganized structure. This difference can also be seen in images taken with a transmission electron microscope or TEM. In the image on the left, we can see that graphite maintains a neat and organized alignment. In the image on the right, we can see that hard carbon has a disorganized and chaotic structure. In my internship, my research has focused on characterizing biomass-derived hard carbon samples. Using a variety of microscopy techniques, I've been observing each sample characterizing their structure, and looking for features that make hard carbon a good candidate to replace graphite, one of which is layering. I took this image on an SEM microscope and in this sample you can see the distinct layering is present. Across all of the samples that I looked at, the presence of layering and the amount varied, but based off what I've observed, in addition to research that is pre-existing, biomass-derived hard carbon does have the potential to replace graphite in battery anode applications.
In addition, biomass is available in large quantities locally. So not only would the need for petroleum-derived graphite be eliminated, the need for foreign importation of battery material resources would be reduced. Now let's take a step back and review what we've covered. Why should we care about the sustainability of battery technologies? Because batteries are necessary to the success of a global energy transition, but the current materials used in batteries have severe environmental impacts. However, alternative materials have great potential. For instance, biomass-derived hard carbon, which is being explored as an alternative for petroleum-derived graphite. Nonetheless, replacing graphite is only one solution and exploring other solutions to improve battery sustainability is an important next step. In conclusion, batteries make the decarbonization of our world feasible, but we must consider the impacts of what make up a battery. As consumers, we can advocate for research efforts to improve the sustainability of battery technologies, bringing about a truly sustainable renewable energy future. Thank you.

Darcy Cherlin:
Hi. My name is Darcy Cherlin. I am a health policy and research fellow at the US Department of Health and Human Services. My mentor is Dr. Jessica Deerin, and today I'm going to talk about how you can help eliminate hepatitis C in the US. Did you know there is a cure for hepatitis C? It's a medication you take for just eight to 12 weeks. That's impressive. We don't have this for HIV or cancer, so hepatitis C must not be a problem anymore, right? Wrong. More than 2 million people are still living with hepatitis C. That's more than the population of Houston, the fourth-largest city in the US. But how can this be if we have a cure? Well, that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. I'll answer this question by touching on three points. One, why hepatitis C is still a problem. Two, what barriers exist that prevent cure, and three, how we can overcome these barriers by scaling up strategies.
So first, let's make you all hepatitis C experts. Hepatitis C is caused by the hepatitis C virus or HCV, which is spread through blood and can lead to chronic infection, which can cause liver disease and liver cancer. Many people have no symptoms when they get infected, which is why testing is so important. Caught early enough, these negative outcomes can be avoided. The CDC now recommends all adults be screened for HCV at least once in their lifetime. Hepatitis C has increased over the years due to the surge in opioid use. The green line in this graph shows an increase in opioid admissions, corresponding with the orange line, which shows an increase in the rate of HCV. You did it. Now that you're all experts, let's get back on track. We know that hepatitis C has been increasing over the years because of the opioid epidemic, but still we have an effective cure. So what's going on?
If you look at the orange on this graph, you see that as we move from left to right, we lose patients from infection to diagnosis and from diagnosis to treatment and from treatment to cure. This is because there are barriers at each step from prevention all the way to cure at the system, patient and provider level that prevent patients from making it to the last step, cure. I'm going to talk about barriers from diagnosis to treatment. Some examples are stigma, provider availability, cost of treatment, insurance restrictions, and patient accessibility. Trying to find a provider is hard enough, but what if you don't have access to transportation, childcare or don't trust doctors? So we've answered the question that hepatitis C is still a problem because of all these barriers that exist. One thing we do in my office is look for strategies or models that have been successful in overcoming these barriers.
For example, offering hepatitis C test treatment in settings where people who use opioids are more likely to go has been proven to be an effective model like opioid treatment programs which offer treatment for opioid use, but could also offer hepatitis C treatment. But looking at the data, only 17% of federally certified programs reported offering hepatitis C treatment. My research looks to increase the number of these programs that offer hepatitis C treatment on site. I will do this in three steps. One, conduct statistical modeling to identify variables that may impact a site offering treatment. Two, interview programs and three, develop guidelines to share strategies and models with other programs. Statistical modeling measures the strength of association and direction between variables. This can show us if variables have a positive or negative correlation or no correlation with a site offering hepatitis C treatment. Next, we interview a subset or sample of programs to verify our findings from step one and ask questions we can't always learn from the data to build a more comprehensive understanding of strategies used to implement hepatitis C treatment.
In the final step, we will take findings from steps one and two and develop a roadmap or guidelines for other programs to see how they could adopt these strategies and implement hepatitis C treatment into their programs across the US. The more sites that can implement these strategies, the more sites that will offer hepatitis C treatment, which means the more people who can be cured and the closer we are to eliminating hepatitis C in the US. That was a lot. As a recap, today we covered despite having a cure, why hepatitis C is still a problem, what barriers exist that prevent cure, and how we can overcome these barriers by scaling up strategies. Here's what you can do to eliminate hepatitis C. As I mentioned, it is now recommended that all adults be screened, so talk to your doctor today about being tested and don't stop there, encourage your friends and family to do it too. Thank you.

Anastacia Dressel:
Hi. My name is Anastacia Dressel and I'm an intern under the Mickey Leland Energy Fellowship stationed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I'm currently a rising senior at Cornell University studying biological engineering, and my mentors this summer are Michael Ross and Mark Mitchell. Think about all the technology that people use in everyday life such as LED light bulbs in rooms, catalytic converters in cars, and even the computer that you might be using to watch this presentation. Most of these devices use rare earth elements which have continued to grow in demand despite being difficult to extract, separate and recycle, but what are rare earth elements? And if it is so hard to harvest them, what's being done to improve the rare earth element collection processes? I will start by providing a brief overview of rare earth elements and why we need them. Then I will explain my research and its potential for solving rare earth element collection issues.
Finally, I will cover a bit about what you can do to help mitigate the problem. What are rare earth elements? Rare earth elements make up the lanthanides on the periodic table and include scandium and yttrium. They contain unique optic and magnetic properties which make them incredibly useful in our society today. You can find rare earth elements in quite a wide variety of technologies, including MRIs, computer hard drives, personal devices like smartphones and PCs, LED light bulbs, renewable energy technologies, catalytic converters, and much more. Demand for rare earth elements continues to grow. Unfortunately, however, current methods of rare earth extraction and separation are usually very long and environmentally damaging. As people and companies are unlikely to decrease rare earth element usage in the near future, we'll need to start finding better collection methods for rare earths. There's been a big push towards new and more efficient rare earth extraction and separation processes in the past few years.
I'm currently helping to optimize one of these new methods concerning an electrospun nanofiber mesh as a rare earth filter. Electrospinning is the process of using voltage to stretch liquid material and capturing the resulting fibers. This forms a mesh of really tiny fibers. Shown here is a picture of nanofibers taken a few weeks ago. Electrospun nanofibers have quite a few applications including medical purposes, fuel cells like batteries, and air filtration. My work this summer is focused on functionalizing or binding a biomolecule to the nanofibers to allow them to filter rare earth elements. The molecule I'm currently using is called LBT or lanthanide-binding-tag, a peptide with a special site that can select for rare earth elements. To attach the LBT to the nanofibers, I use the chemistry technique called thiol-maleimide-click chemistry, where molecular pieces are attached to the LBT and the nanofiber mesh separately. When combined, these molecular pieces called maleimide and thiol groups covalently bond and act as the glue holding the LBT to the nanofibers.
There are a lot of steps to this process and a lot of different ways to make Electrospun nanofibers. My work has been focused on trying to optimize this process. The experiment was created last summer and we want it to be upscaled. We want it to be competitive with current or at least other alternative methods of rare earth element extraction. Recent results I've collected have shown that the nanofibers are extracting neodymium or rare earth used to make powerful magnets in similar quantities to another method developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory involving microbeads. These microbeads are attached to a protein which works very similarly to LBT. Obtaining these similar results is quite the accomplishment, and I hope to keep improving the process as we need to be both economically sustainable and conserve as much material as possible. In the future, the nanofibers could help filter rare earth elements from coal reserves, which may contain up to 10.9 million metric tons of rare earths.
But what can people do while researchers work on ways to extract rare earths from the environment more efficiently? One of the biggest issues with rare earth element usage is the lack of recycling of the consumer technologies that contain them. Unfortunately, this can't just be normal recycling. There are computer and phone manufacturers and sellers that will allow their customers to trade in or recycle their devices, notably Apple and Best Buy. These companies have the means to better recycle and repurpose their old technology. Trying to use technology to the end of its life or buying tech secondhand is another way to ensure that we are utilizing pre-existing tech with rare earths for as long as possible. Everything we can do to encourage a circular economy, one that can effectively reuse products or pieces of products will make all the difference when it comes to rare earth elements. We can't extract rare earths from resources we don't have, and sending devices to the landfill makes rare earth elements that much harder to recover.
We may at times have to throw technology away, but there's often an alternative. If you and I can recycle technology, the research we're doing will hopefully make it possible to recycle rare earth elements more effectively and efficiently in the future. Thank you.

Samaria Estrella:
Hello, I'm Samaria Estrella. My mentor is Dr. Candace Rutt and I'm a behavioral epidemiology fellow at the CDC. And today I'll be discussing alcohol-based hand sanitizer or ABHS message testing among young adults, adult men and Spanish speakers. So I know the COVID-19 pandemic is over, but I really hope that this isn't become our new normal. I still sanitize my hands, but is ABHS still needed now that we're moving on? No answer needed because I know that with salary, height, weight, number of sexual partners, drinking habits and hygiene, what people say and what they do don't always align. And with hand hygiene, it's very important that they do to maintain personal and community health. And we've done that in the US. Adult men, Spanish speakers and young adults have reported not using ABHS as recommended. So we conducted interviews to test our hand hygiene messages focusing on three questions.
The first one assessing if the five CDC messages promote ABHS use. The second assessing if any gaps exist in hand sanitizing language. And the third, how CDC can improve the use of ABHS among these groups. And all of this with the intent to improve our current messages seen here on the left in order to reach our target population by using less texts as seen as the one on the right and featuring people that look like them as well. So starting with question one, we'll highlight these messages by each one. So message one focuses on when and when not to use ABHS, say when your hands are visibly dirty or greasy. Respondents said the call to action was feasible, motivating, and they learned that ABHS is an option when soap and water are not available. And still on question one, message two addressed how to select and use ABHS properly and that it must be allowed to dry completely.
Respondents said that clarifying best practices and the 60% alcohol minimum was very helpful in motivating their use. Message three highlighted hand washing as the best method for removing all types of germs and chemicals and to only use ABHS when hand washing is not possible. And here respondents wanted a better explanation of why this is true. And this led us perfectly to message four, which compares both of the practices in detail. Here we see that respondents learned that while hand washing removes germs from our hands, those same germs with using ABHS are only killed and remain in our hands. Pretty gross. And finally here on message five, it compared baby disinfecting and sanitizing wipes based on how they each should be used. And our respondents said they learned that using wipes incorrectly can cause irritation wherever applied.
And then addressing question number two, there are many gaps in hand sanitizing language. Words like eliminate in Spanish translate to mean both kill and remove, and this blended the purpose of sanitizing and washing. And then some of these words when translated made the tone more formal. And this was a part of a list of competing questions such as do we want a clinical or a funny tone? Are our hands cleaner when we wash and sanitize? Is removing or killing germs recommended? And how effective is ABHS with less or more than 60% alcohol? But we were surprised that people were unfamiliar with CDC. Now, they did know cleaning brands like Clorox and Lysol, but they couldn't differentiate between the types of wipes. They only preferred the term hand sanitizer and wanted less medical terminology. And since these groups supported not using ABHS as recommended, we wanted to know what was already motivating them to use it. Being in public, protecting others and themselves were the strongest motivators for using ABHS.
And to address question three on how CDC can improve ABHS use, we asked about existing barriers. Respondents were unsure of what situations called for removing germs versus killing them and what to do when hand washing was preferred but inconvenient. And when we asked about dissemination, the leading spokespersons requested were similar people, celebrities and medical professionals or scientists. And for channels, we had TV ads and streaming apps and services. And the next we asked where these educational materials should be placed. The leading physical locations where public places like restrooms, gyms, buses or subways, schools and medical settings. And all of this, given that we are living in a digital age, it was no surprise that our respondents suggested many virtual locations. These included Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, the prestigious YouTube University and TikTok life hacks were the leading platforms.
And all of this, to summarize, that the messages did promote ABHS use among our target groups, and future messaging should use plain language with minimal medical terms, and CDC can improve ABHS use by using popular platforms with relatable spokespersons. So in closing, people should use ABHS when soap and water are not available, even if they're not sure which practice is best in certain situations. And yes, ABHS is still necessary and health communicators can create tailored messages that clearly address what to use and why. Thank you.

Amanda Fanelli:
Hi. My name's Amanda Fanelli. I'm an ORHIS postdoctoral fellow at US Daily Forage Research Center, USDA, and today I want to explore this question, can we improve milk production by making alfalfa more digestible? To improve milk production, the animals are very important, but also what we feed them. Alfalfa is widely used for that, but can we make it better? Could we improve milk production by making it more digestible? I want to answer this question by discussing these three main points. First, why digestibility is important, then how's this linked to cell wall composition? And finally, could we really make it more digestible? Let's start by thinking about the diet of a dairy cow. We know proteins are very important so that they can make milk, but the cows also need energy usually provided by sugars so that they can use up all these proteins. The leaves of alfalfa are rich in proteins and both leaves and stems have polysaccharides, and these are energy sources because polysaccharides are basically large molecules made up of sugar units.
Alfalfa is rich in structural polysaccharides such as cellulose. They're a part of the plant cell wall. These work like construction materials, giving strength and support to the plant. But how can this be energy sources? Well, there are microorganisms inside the cow's rumen that are able to break these large molecules into sugars and then convert the sugars into energy through fermentation processes, and that's when digestibility comes into play. The enzymes of these microorganisms in the rumen need to access the polysaccharides inside the plant cell wall and break them, essentially digest them, and that can be challenging. The tissues that make up alfalfa stems such as vascular tissues are reaching cell walls and these have lots of polysaccharides, but these are not very digestible. Why is that? Let's take a closer look at the plant cell wall. The main components are lignin and the polysaccharides, cellulose and hemicellulose.
We can say it's a complex structure with components interacting with each other. First, there's lignin, this large molecule that has a role in structure and defense. It is not an energy source and it also blocks the access of the enzymes to the polysaccharides, decreasing digestibility. Then there are hemicelluloses. These are polysaccharides. The main one for alfalfa is xylan made of xylose sugars. Xylan is not very digestible and it also interacts with other components, decreasing digestibility. Finally, there's cellulose, this polysaccharide made of glucose units. So that's a great energy source, but as we have seen, the digestibility of cellulose decreases as it interacts with xylan and lignin. So how could we make the stems of alfalfa more digestible? If we had cell walls with less lignin, less xylan, or even more cellulose, they would be more digestible. But how could we achieve that? A promising approach is using genetics and molecular biology techniques to manipulate the components of the cell wall to have more of what we want and less of what we don't want.
For instance, we could use plant breeding in which we select plants with enhanced digestibility and cross these with commercial elite cultivars, ending up with a new variety with enhanced digestibility. We could also use genetic engineering in which we insert a gene into the plant's genome or even edit a gene that's already in the genome, generating a new line with enhanced digestibility, and that's already becoming a reality. There is an alfalfa commercial line with less lignin and improved digestibility, especially when postponing harvesting because lignin accumulates as the plant matures. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. So far we have explored mostly lignin, but there are other components in the cell wall such as polysaccharides that we could manipulate to improve digestibility even further and really achieve our goals. So can we improve milk production by making alfalfa more digestible?
The answer is yes, but there is still a lot of research to be done to understand how the cell is built and how we can manipulate its components. So the next time you have a glass of milk, I encourage you to think about how science can be used to improve agriculture and how important that is to the food we bring to our table every day. Thank you.

Bella Garcia:
Hi. My name is Bella Garcia and I'm a CDC ORISE fellow for the division of Viral Hepatitis. I work in the assay development team with Lilia Ganova-Raeva and Maja Kodani, and today I'll be presenting on development of a point-of-care assay for hepatitis C virus. So when you look at this group of people, how many do you think have HCV and do not know it? If you guessed four, you're correct. Four in 10 individuals are unaware they have HCV, so knowing your status requires diagnostic testing. So why do we need to develop a new HCV test? I'll address that by talking about how HCV is a silent global killer and I'll also address diagnosis obstacles and also how our assay contributes to hepatitis elimination by 2030. HCV, which spreads by blood, can cause varied symptoms, however many HCV carriers are asymptomatic. If left untreated, it can cause liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, and even liver failure which can lead to death.
HCV doesn't discriminate, affecting around 71 million people globally and having significant prevalence in Europe, Asia and Africa, where HCV testing is limited and HCV surveillance lags behind. Currently HCV diagnosis requires a patient to get an antibody test following an HCV RNA test. If a patient has an active infection, then they can get treated with different medications even though there's no HCV vaccine available. Although there's effective treatment plans available for HCV, there are several obstacles that account for low HCV diagnosis and treatment rates. For example, many HCV carriers and at-risk individuals may not have any education on HCV infections and diagnostic testing. Also, due to financial constraints, many may not be able to afford healthcare. And lastly, because HCV diagnosis requires multiple doctor visits, that leads to a loss of follow-up with a doctor to get treated.
In order to address these barriers in HCV diagnosis, my team and I are developing a point of care assay that makes HCV diagnosis more affordable, user-friendly, and with rapid results that can be done in one doctor visit. Due to high costs in RNA testing, we're focusing on detecting HCV core antigen. As it follows HCV RNA levels, we'll be using a capture sandwich assay and a pretreatment step to detect it in blood. Just like it takes a huge bite to get to the center of a Tootsie pop, we must bite into the envelope that surrounds the core to detect it. We'll be doing that by adding a sample pretreatment step before using the capture sandwich assay for detection. So the capture sandwich assay consists of a bead bound HCV core antibody that captures a patient's core antigen. Then this core antigen is labeled with a fluorescent labeled HCV core antibody for detection. If these antibody pairs successfully bind onto the core antigen after several washes, then it will glow under a light source and this indicates that the sample is positive for HCV core antigen.
This also indicates that the sample is positive for HCV. Currently we've tested around 210 antibody pairs with non-envelope core antigens. In about 54 antibody pairs we're able to detect the core well by having high glow measurements. We're now testing these antibody pairs with clinical samples and different pretreatments. Once we find the best pretreatment and antibody pairs for our assay, we hope to transfer it onto a lateral flow assay. One of the most famous lateral flow assays you probably used is the at-home COVID-19 test. In our lateral flow assay, you would add a few drops of blood onto the sample pad and it flows down to stick to get results. The conjugate pad consists of detector antibodies that would capture any present core antigens. The test line will contain capture antibodies that would capture any flag core antigens, and the control line will contain capture antibodies that would capture any detector antibodies. The control line is needed to validate the test line results for the patient.
In the future, we hope to combine this core antigen assay with an antibody test we've already created in our lab to create a combo test like Abbott's HIV antigen antibody blood test that is available in the US. In essence, with developing a point-of-care assay for Hepatitis C virus it can increase access to affordable testing to the US and around the world. This brings us a step closer to eliminating the threat of hepatitis in our lives. Also with increased screening from testing, this can improve HCV surveillance on the spread of HCV. This can help us determine any areas that need public health interventions and this can prevent millions of deaths per year. If you would like to make a difference, get tested, encourage your friends, your family, even your grandparents to get tested as they're more susceptible to HCV. Even better if you get tested on World Hepatitis Day that happens every July. Thank you.

Adrian Harris:
Hi. My name is Adrian Harris and I currently work as a bioinformatician in the Rickettsial Zoonoses branch at CDC. Today I'll be discussing how we can leverage MiSeq sequencing data to aid in the surveillance of ticks and tick-borne pathogens in the US. The number of cases of vector borne diseases has tripled over a 13-year span. Notably, ticks transmit a majority of these vector borne diseases, but the presence of their pathogens are still thought to be underestimated. This is where tick surveillance comes into play. Over the course of this talk, I will address three points. One, the importance of tick surveillance. Two, the current workflow for identifying the presence of ticks and tick-borne pathogens. Three, expansions in the workflow to detect more pathogens in a greater array of ticks. Over the course of this talk, you will gain a better understanding of what tick surveillance is, and the screening and data analysis supporting tick surveillance efforts at the CDC. By the end, we will have addressed the overarching question, how does our work upstream of tick surveillance impact public health?
Now, the CDC has taken steps to identify the presence of medically relevant ticks and their pathogens in the US. These efforts have culminated in tick surveillance maps like this in which the presence of tick-borne pathogens are shown at a county level and the expected range of the host tick is highlighted in yellow. With these tick surveillance maps, physicians can become better educated on tick-borne pathogens present in their region, enabling them to make more informed diagnoses. Surveillance also allows us to better assess the risk of tick-borne pathogens to the general population and adjust our public health messaging accordingly. Historically, tick-borne pathogen surveillance relied on gathering and screening ticks using single pathogen tests. So if you wanted to test the tick for multiple pathogens, that would require multiple tests. This makes surveillance for multiple pathogens both expensive and time-consuming. We have since switched to a multiplex test developed by the CDC and capable of assessing a sample for multiple tick-borne pathogens at once.
This test is less expensive and requires less time. Overall, it increases the lab's throughput allowing us to efficiently screen more ticks for more pathogens. So how does it work? Well, ticks are ground up to prepare for DNA extraction. After extraction, specific regions of DNA are amplified via PCR. These amplified regions are then sequenced by an Illumina iSeq sequencer giving us an idea of what DNA was present in each tick sample. As a bioinformatician, my role is to perform the downstream analysis for this data. I work with a pipeline that takes those amplified regions known as sequencing reads and matches or maps these reads to a set of target sequences for known tick-borne pathogens. Despite the clear advantages and throughput, the current challenge to overcome with this test is a limited scope of detection. As it stands, it is only able to detect one genus of ticks that being Ixodes and four tick-borne pathogens, Borrelia, Ehrlichia, Anaplasma, and Babesia.
Moving forward, we want to expand this existing workflow. Firstly, we want to increase the scope of detection from four to around 15 tick-borne pathogens, as well as increase the number of detectable tick genre or tick types. Secondly, we want to improve the accessibility or usability of the workflow. In expanding the number of detectable ticks and tick-borne pathogens, we hope to inform the public on more tick-borne diseases. One tick-borne pathogen we are interested in adding to the workflow first is Rickettsia. A causative agent for Rickettsia in humans, but how can we add Rickettsia to this workflow? Well, this requires us to find locations of DNA where there's enough difference to distinguish between the different Rickettsia species. The image above represents such a location with the differences highlighted. We can design primers to bind and amplify this region. Voila, now we have new targets to add to our workflow for Rickettsia. We can further increase the scope of detection of unknown pathogenic species.
We simply take sequences that don't match our known target pathogens and we map them against a larger database. This allows us to detect novel species recently added to the larger database by other labs. In improving the usability of the workflow, we want to ensure that the analysis of MiSeq data is not limited to specialized personnel like bioinformaticians and computer scientists. Hence, we have begun development of a graphical user interface GUI to encase the workflow's code into an autonomous and approachable experience. We have also taken steps to ensure that the output is concise and usable for a tick surveillance team. Output will boil down to the genus of the tick, and the tick-borne pathogens detected for each tick sample. In a run output could be as simple as a single Excel sheet or as complex as storing data in local database. So to recap, we discuss the importance of tick surveillance in informing physicians. We discuss the multiplex test used currently in tick surveillance.
Lastly, we discussed the improvements to the test by increasing the scope of detection and enhancing the accessibility of the workflow. Ultimately, each MiSeq run and subsequent analysis helps paint a more comprehensive picture of what ticks and tick-borne pathogens exist in the US, which in turn shapes the resources we provide to the public. So optimizing the lab's workflow's integral to an informed response in the public health sphere. As I close today, I encourage you all to consider the importance of ticks and tick-borne pathogens the next time you're outdoors, hiking or camping. Moreover, check the tick page of the CDC website to stay up to date on tick surveillance, symptoms of tick-borne pathogens, and tick bite prevention. I wanted to take the time to acknowledge my mentor and his help Dr. Karpathy. I also wanted to acknowledge the work of Karen Valdez, another ORISE fellow who has been instrumental in a lot of the processing and the sequencing of these tick samples. And I wanted to thank ORISE and CDC jointly as well. Thank you.

Jake Krauss:
Hi. I'm Jake Krauss with the EPA's Office of Water. We're going to learn what an estuary is, some of the challenges that they face, and what the EPA is doing to protect them through the National Estuary Program. We're going to shine a spotlight with the power of social media to highlight an example success story from the Delaware Estuary program using oyster reef restoration and community engagement to restore that estuary. So I want you to take a moment and close your eyes. Imagine taking a deep breath in and smelling the salty air, the earthy scent of seaweed built up on the shore. You're where salt water from the ocean meets freshwater from rivers that flow from land to the sea. These bodies of water are known as estuaries. They're bastions of biodiversity, providing habitat for all kinds of critters. They provide crucial services from pollutants to keep the water clean to protecting coastal communities from surging seas.
Estuaries support industries like fisheries and tourism that rely on healthy populations of fish and other types of seafood like crabs and oysters. How have you benefited from estuaries? Personally, I remember taking camping trips on the Delaware Cape biking through wetlands and soaking in the bay, catching crabs on the water. That's little me on the left, fishing for fish in the Delaware Estuary. Unfortunately, estuaries face many challenges of their own. Pollution from land trickles downstream into estuaries. Development and draining of wetlands removes valuable habitat. A large threat is considered to be nutrient pollution. Excess nutrients fuel algal growth, causing large blooms that take over the estuary like this one featured in the photo. These large algal mats suffocate all other life underneath. For my second point, the EPA has the National Estuary Program that provides support to help restore 28 estuaries across the country. In collaboration with regional partners, they work to address local issues.
However, many estuaries face similar issues and lessons learned under one restoration plan can be used to help the others. A centralized plan is needed to boost awareness of the National Estuary Program and help create unified messaging. For long-term success, community support helps apply national solutions to local problems. A unified messaging campaign can influence decision makers and rally communities to invest in estuary conservation. My project is developing a social media spotlight, showcasing success stories to inspire further protections and get people out to visit their local estuary. By weaving together the common themes, I hope to give a voice to the estuaries. For my third point, we'll go through an example story I'll highlight on social media. Let's take a journey to the shores of Delaware Estuary. Here, oysters make up a central part of the ecology of the estuary. Oysters form together to create large reefs that provide habitat for other critters. They feed on particles in the water, filtering them out to keep the water clean.
They're an essential food source for people and support fisheries and recreation. Plus, they're pretty tasty. Disease outbreaks decimated the population of the bay in the '50s, and again in the '09s. Oyster reefs are resilient, but they need a helping hand to fully recover from these setbacks. Delaware Estuary collaborates with local partners to seed oyster reefs. As larvae, oysters swim freely until they find a hard surface to settle on. Most often on other oyster shells. As they build up over time, they form a reef. The community got involved in the project through the Give a Shuck campaign. After eating oysters, used shells can be recycled and returned to the bay for future generations of oysters to settle on and continue building the reef. Volunteers get involved to bag shells and local restaurants serve as recycling points of pickup. Through community engagement and restoration efforts, the Delaware Estuary is rebuilding its oyster reefs one shell at a time.
Many of the estuary programs have oyster reefs and beds. By focusing on this success story and amplifying across social media platforms, others can take inspiration and incorporate similar projects for their programs. Today we looked at the importance of estuaries supporting life, recreation, and industry. We dove into what is being done by EPA national estuary programs to address some of their challenges, focusing in on Delaware Estuary's oysters. Take a moment of gratitude and thank the estuaries for all they do. If you live near one, consider taking a trip to visit an estuary yourself and see this national treasure because protecting a place starts with engagement. Thank you very much.

Sophia Sukkestad:
Hi. My name is Sophia Sukkestad and I'm an ORISE fellow with the division of Viral Hepatitis at the Centers for Disease Prevention. My mentors are Dr. Tonya Hayden and Dr. Lilia Ganova-Raeva. Today I'm thrilled to present to you a drug resistant hepatitis B virus. Now, imagine that you're feeling under the weather. You have a bacterial infection and a scrape or maybe a persistent cough. You take medication to treat your infection exactly as your doctor prescribed, but your symptoms don't let up. You may ask what gives? Have you heard of this phenomenon called drug resistance? Many journalists report on resistance in bacteria like MRSA and gonorrhea under startling superbug headlines, but did you know that resistance can also arise in viral infections? In fact, there are many viruses that infect humans with known resistance to antivirals including hepatitis B virus or HBV. So today I want to discuss why does resistance happen? How widespread is it in low-income countries and how can we stop it?
Though vaccine preventable, HBV is still a threat to global public health with 296 million documented cases worldwide in 2019. And while some cases of acute infection resolved, most patients progress to lifelong chronicity. Patients with incurable chronic HBV infection or CHB experience painful ascites, liver cirrhosis, cancer and premature death without effective healthcare. And in the US, 2 million people with CHB require lifelong treatment. Luckily, there's a range of therapies used to control HBV infection depending on things like pregnancy status and stage of chronicity. Each drug differs in its mechanism of action, but all have recorded cases of HBV resistance. So you might be thinking, how does this even happen? Resistance for any pathogen can emerge by spontaneous mutation or random changes in the genome. Some mutations, including those for resistance can incur a negative effect or a fitness cost to the pathogen. But if the environment shifts, it can create what is known as selective pressure for the mutation.
For HBV, resistance mutations impair viral replication, but during treatment this cost to replication improve survival. Most drugs used to treat HBV are called nucleotide analogs or NAs, which block HBV's polymerase the enzyme that copies HBV DNA. In resistant mutants, the polymerase has a different structure allowing it to sneak by and make more DNA. Although newly developed NAs like the ones you see here have a high barrier to resistance, many countries in the world still have limited access to them and rely on older interventions like this one, which promotes rapid evolution of resistance in chronic patients. One such country is Tanzania, where implementation of treatments with high resistance barriers is not standardized. In Tanzania, HBV transmission rates are high in blood donations, healthcare settings, and during childbirth. This clearly creates a very dire situation for the spread of resistant HBV in Tanzania. So to better understand how widespread resistance is in the country, our group is using Sanger Sequencing to identify where known and novel mutations could be on the polymerase gene.
These sequences are then translated to amino acids to predict protein structure. If we find changes linked with resistance, we can estimate the prevalence of resistant HBV. Baseline samples can help differentiate between treatment-induced versus background mutations. Once we determine the proportion of patients with resistance mutations, we can cross-reference these mutations with the type of treatment the patient is taking. Then we can use this data to inform clinicians which drugs may not work and what alternatives could replace them. Furthermore, we can use this data to advocate for updated testing, vaccination, and therapy schedules in pregnant mothers in newborns. This type of prevalence data can also inform implementation of combination therapies, and new treatments with high resistance barriers. Several combination therapies are already showing promise in the battle against resistant HBV, including the one that you see here. Other drugs like small interfering RNA and entry and secretion inhibitors are also demonstrating efficacy in clinical trials.
Accessibility to these novel avenues of treatment is crucial in Tanzania where healthcare settings largely drive the spread of HBV. Again, this is largely due to a lack of standardization in screening blood donations, and in sterile practices among healthcare workers. Now, our study does mostly center on Tanzanian patients and transmission contexts do vary geographically, but our study will still contribute to knowledge that will bolster HBV testing and vaccination campaigns around the world, including in the US. Well, now you might be thinking, what can I do? Be an advocate. Promote practices of safe sex. Support harm reduction programs in your community. Take any antivirals exactly as prescribed, and encourage your loved ones to get tested and vaccinated for HBV. Together we can stop the spread of drug resistant hepatitis B virus. This pathogen does have superbug potential, but through community partnership and advocacy we can be the superheroes that keep it out of the headlines once and for all. Thanks so much.

Erica Young:
Hello. My name is Erica Young, and today I'm going to talk to you about particulate nutrients in the North American Great Lakes. I'm an ORISE participant in the US EPA Region Five Great Lakes National Program Office, which I'll refer to as GLNPO for this presentation. My mentors are Annie Scofield and Matt Pawlowski. First, I'll talk about the significance of the Great Lakes, and then I'll talk about how we can use particulate nutrients as a tool for assessing the health of the lower food web. Then I'll wrap up by sharing the results of the particulate nutrient data that GLNPO has collected since 1997. North American Great Lakes contain 20% of the planet's fresh water making in the world's largest freshwater ecosystem. To put that into perspective, if you were to drain all the water from the Great Lakes and spread it evenly, it would cover the continental US in nine feet of water.
The Great Lakes support many organisms living within and around them, including almost 40 million humans and a fishing industry valued at over $7 billion. We can represent the transfer of energy within this huge system using this simple food web diagram. The microscopic organisms that make up the base of the food web known as plankton are the key players here. They provide the energy and the sustenance for everyone laying above them in this figure. Without a strong and healthy foundation, the rest of the system could collapse. So how can we assess the health of the lower food web and see just how strong that foundation is? If you were to go out into the middle of one of the Great Lakes and collect some water, there would probably be some suspended particulate matter in your water sample, and that matter is typically made up of plankton. But for plankton to thrive, they need just the right amounts of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. We can directly measure the concentration of CN&P in particulate matter and then assess the nutritional quality of the lower food web based on those concentrations.
GLNPO has been collecting particulate nutrient data since 1997 from these 14 long-term monitoring stations that you see in this map here across the Great Lakes. And this gets done on the EPA's research vessel, the Lake Guardian. So when we're on the lake, the ship's rosette gets deployed into the water to collect the water samples, which is on the left side here. The samples are then taken from the rosette, passed through a filter, and then the concentration of carbon, nitrogen or phosphorus left behind on that filter gets directly measured. And GLNPO has carried out this process for over 20 years. I'm going to show you how particulate nutrient concentrations have changed across the Great Lakes from 1997 to 2019. And today, I'm only going to show the statistically significant trends that we've seen over this 23 year study. So let's look at some trends. We have time moving forward on the X-axis and the concentration of the nutrient on the Y-axis.
Particulate organic carbon declined in Lake Huron while they increased in Central Lake Erie over this study period. Particulate nitrogen steadily decreased in Lake Huron, but that reversed in 2012 and has been increasing since then. Nonetheless, the overall trend for this lake is still negative. The opposite was true in Central Erie where those concentrations have increased through time. Particulate phosphorus declined in Lake Huron and in Lake Michigan, while it increased in Lake Superior. Phosphorus is arguably the most crucial to the lower food lab because it's often the nutrient with the lowest naturally occurring concentrations in the water column. That was a lot of information so let me sum it up for you right here. We saw increased particulate phosphorus in Lake Superior, decreased particulate phosphorus in Lake Michigan, increased particulate organic carbon and nitrogen in Central Lake Erie, and decreases in all three nutrients in Lake Huron. So how can we interpret all of these trends and what are they telling us?
I want to shift the focus back to lakes Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Erie, where we saw the biggest changes in those particulate nutrient concentrations for that study period. If you take a look at this abstract lake diagram, we have our particulate matter, which is representative of the lower food web. As this lake becomes less productive, the amount of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus decreases, and then the reverse is true for increasing productivity within this lake. So with decreasing productivity, a lake can't support as many organisms as it used to and vice versa. So it's possible that Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are following this lower route you see in the picture, while Central Lake Erie could be following this upper route. Too much or too little carbon nitrogen and phosphorus in the lower food web can throw the whole thing off balance. How will consumers respond with all these changes in productivity and ultimately, how will it affect the $7 billion efficient industry and the humans who depend on the lakes for their drinking water and for their food?
These are the kinds of questions that the scientists at US EPA and GLNPO try to answer through their long-term monitoring programs and their focused science initiatives. There's a wealth of data available from these different programs such as the biology, water quality, sediment surveillance, and fish monitoring programs. The results of my project give us a better understanding of the status of the lower food web, and it can provide useful information for managers in their decision-making and in their priority setting. GLNPO's monitoring data is also publicly available, and a lot of it goes back to 1983. If you have an interest in the world's largest freshwater system, I highly encourage you to check out GLNPO and see what you can find. Thank you for your time.

Will White:
Well, I would just like to take a moment to commend all of the presenters on a job well done. The effort each of you has put into craft such a polished presentation is clearly evident, and without you all this competition would not exist. So thank you. As a reminder to our audience, the Menti survey for fan favorite is still running. So go and cast your vote now. The winner of the fan favorite will receive a $250 gift card, so it does carry a monetary prize so your vote does matter. We'll close the survey in a few minutes, and we'll announce all of the winners but for now, I'm going to pass things over to Kam.

Kam Manuel:
Thank you, Will. Those were some amazing Ignite Talk presentations. I'm so impressed with the research projects that our interns and fellows have had the opportunity to be a part of during their appointments, and what they learn from their mentors and their peers. Congratulations to all of the contestants that have put in the time to learn how to develop these Ignite Talks, and the effort you put into doing such phenomenal presentations. As Will mentioned, communicating your research is a skill that is invaluable for STEM professionals. Advancing that skill set of activities like these Ignite Talks can help you learn to speak confidently about your research in a diverse audience, and that will serve you well throughout your career. So congratulations again on an amazing effort all the way around.
Now, I know with such incredible presentations that our judges must have had a really difficult time making a decision. So before we unveil those winners, I would like to take a moment to say thank you to our national judging panel. Thank you to Jamie Seiss, the Site Office Business Division Director at the Department of Energy. Thank you to Dr. David Dotson, a senior Coordinating Scientist at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thank you to Kathleen Carroll, lead designer of the US Digital Corps Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Department of Health and Human Services. Thank you to Dr. Deborah Yourick, Director of the Science Education Fellowship Programs at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Department of Defense. Thank you to Dr. Keri Cagle, senior Director of Scientific and Technical Resources Integration at ORISE and our final judge. Thank you Chester Maze, Director of Information Technology Services at ORISE. Because of the efforts of these judges, we are excited to announce the winners in just a few moments.
Today, you will be hearing from our guest speaker Michelle Branton, the Deputy Manager for Oak Ridge National Laboratory Site Office at the Department of Energy. Thank you Michelle, for supporting this exciting competition, for speaking with us today and unveiling our winners. With that being said, I would like to turn it over to our guest speaker, Michelle Branton, to make the announcement. Michelle?

Michelle Branton:
Thank you Kam, and good afternoon to everyone. I am very proud to have been involved with the Department of Energy's ORISE programs now for over 30 years. Science education and workforce development programs have a long history within the Department of Energy and ORISE. Soon after the war ended in 1945, the provision of a graduate training program at Oak Ridge was deemed necessary to meet the needs of many of the capable young scientists on the project whose education was interrupted by the war and who now desired to complete their education. By March of 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission had entered into a contract with the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear studies, the predecessor of ORISE, to establish and administer a program of advanced study designed to promote the theoretical education and practical training of the scientific personnel essential to the continued conduct of research and development activities in the fields of nuclear and related sciences.
By April 1950, a nationwide program for research participation in fellowships have been established and continues to this day, continually expanding to add disciplines and target audiences. This competition continues to support that proud legacy, and the department's commitment to ensure a sustained pipeline for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics or STEM workforce. The DOE supportive research and development activities enable scientists, engineers, and technicians to engage in research and make substantial contributions to our energy, environment, health, and even national security challenges. Our programs equally benefit the department, other federal agencies, universities, national laboratories, private sector strategic partners, and the thousands of individuals who participate in these activities every year. The Ignite Off! competition gives participants the opportunity to showcase their talents and achievements and those of their sponsor organizations.
I commend all the contestants for the many hours of research and preparation for your Ignite Talks. I saw thoughtful, well articulated projects, presented professionally and passionately and was impressed by the breadth and diversity of the projects. Domestic and global health solutions addressing relevant health challenges, environmentally conscious technology advancement and protecting our natural resources. You are truly solving the big problems. It gives me great hope for our future to see innovation represented by this group of finalists. I want to take a moment for one last acknowledgement and appreciation to a number of groups. To ORISE for sponsoring this event. It takes a lot to put it on, and they are so passionate about what they do. To the judges for giving so generously of your time to evaluate the contestants' work. Having formally served as a judge, I understand what a difficult decision it is. To the sponsor organization for their investments in and support of all of the participants.
To the mentors, principal, investigators, and others who support and encourage up and coming researchers and scientists. And last but certainly not least, to all the competitors for your dedication, passion, and willingness to share your work with all of us. Before I announce the winners of the 2023 Ignite Off! Competition, I want to remind all the contestants that the enduring reward is the knowledge you have gained, the relationships you have forged, and the contributions you will make through your research endeavors. You're all winners in that light, and I hope that you each feel that you have benefited from participating in this experience. Without further ado, maybe, I am pleased to announce the fan favorite this year. Our fan favorite is Samaria Estrella from the CDC. Congratulations. For our announcement of our second place winner congratulations, Madie Addis for your talk on the sustainability of battery technologies.
Finally, I'm honored to announce the first place winner of this competition, Amanda Fanelli on can we improve milk production by making alfalfa more digestible? Congratulations, Amanda, and congratulations to all of you for participating. I will now hand the virtual microphone back to Kam and thank you all.

Kam Manuel:
Thank you again, Michelle. I would like to also thank all of you for being with us today. You just heard some kind remarks from Michelle about everyone that made this competition possible, and please know that ORISE echoes those sentiments as well. We couldn't do any of this without the support of you all, so thank you again. Our finalists truly delivered some incredible presentations and every one of them is a winner. Finally, I would like to thank all of those participants that entered the Ignite Off! competition, the finalists, and a special congratulations to our winners. We are proud that you are part of our global ORISE community, and are excited to watch you thrive as our future of science. Thank you for joining us and for allowing me to be one of your hosts today. Thank you once again to our guest speaker, Michelle Branton, to our national panel of judges, to my co-host, Will White, and to our amazing ORISE Ignite Off team that pulled this event together. To conclude this year's event I would like to turn it back over to Will. Will, take it away.

Will White:
Thank you Kam, and one final thank you to Michelle Branton for taking time out of her schedule to join us today and to announce the winners. So last slide please. So I hope you've all learned something today, and perhaps even been a little bit inspired by some of our presentations given today. For more information about ORISE opportunities, we have a few links on the screen. So to learn more about the DOE opportunities, we'd invite you to check out our WDTS website. For more information on our other sponsoring agencies opportunities, all of them are hosted on zentelect.com. You can learn more about ORISE at our official website, orise.orau.gov, and you can also connect with us through social media to stay abreast of everything going on with all things ORISE. And for our members of the ORISE community, be sure to continue to check into ORISE connections, the platform which will allow ORISE participants, mentors, and alumni to connect and network with one another and to share more about their research, just like we did today.
One final thank you to all of this year's competitors. With the bar that you've set this year, we're certainly looking forward to next year's competition. Thank you all for joining us and have a great afternoon everyone.