- You know, one of the huge values of the ORISE program, I would say, is that, you know, when you have passionate mentors that are working hand in hand with ORISE participants, that is where there is so much, you know, knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer, but then opportunities to continue to grow and have the mentee be the mentor later.

- [Announcer] 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.

- Welcome to the ORISE Featurecast. I am, as always your host, Michael Holtz in the communications and marketing department of ORISE. And I'm really excited today to be talking to Brian Anderson, the director of the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory. Brian, welcome to the ORISE Featurecast.

- Michael, it's a pleasure to be here.

- So talk to me a little bit, kind of at a high level, what does the National Energy Technology Laboratory, or NETL as we like to call it, and I know you all call it, what does NETL do?

- Well, we are like the other 16 National Laboratories, we are one of the Department of Energy's National Labs. Our office in which we sit is the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. And in fact, NETL has been around since 1910. We were originally found as part of the Bureau of Mines. There was a spate of mine explosions in 1908. And we were founded to try to solve that problem of underground mine explosions in Appalachia. So that was our Pittsburgh site. We have a Morgantown laboratory... That's Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We have a Morgantown West Virginia site that was founded just after the Second World War as the US Synthesis Fuels Laboratory, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis from turning coal into liquid fuels, like the Germans did in the Second World War. And then we have an Albany, Oregon site that was founded in the middle of the Second World War to develop new materials and alloys. And that's the location where the refining process for zinc and... Not for zinc, for zirconium and titanium was founded, the Kroll process. And so a birth of an advanced metals industry in that part of Oregon. And so we have three distinct laboratory locations, but what makes us a little bit unique is we're, of the 17 National Labs, we are the one that is government owned, government operated. And so in addition to having onsite research, that again, is largely in the area of fossil energy and carbon management, like in carbon capture and sequestration, we also help the Department of Energy implement programs and the extramural program to private sector partners, to academia. And so we have a project management office and we have a procurement and financial assistance office that handles these extramural programs for not just fossil energy and carbon management, but energy efficiency and renewable energy, The Office of Electricity, cybersecurity, energy security, and emergency response, The Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, manufacturing energy, supply chains, the grid deployment office, little bit of NSA work, and the Joint Department of Energy, Department of Transportation Vehicles office. And I don't think I left anybody out.

- And as if you weren't busy enough, you were also the executive director, right, of an interagency working group. Talk a little bit about that.

- Yeah, so in the energy transition that we're looking at over the coming decades, we know it's gonna be a huge shift in the economy at large. But for a lot of communities, like coal and oil and gas communities around the country, it means a change in the livelihood of individual workers. And so administration has made a commitment in the first week of this administration, the executive order called Tackling The Climate Crisis At Home And Abroad. This is executive order 14008, if anybody wonders. Section 218 of that executive order, inclusive of environmental and economic and energy justice provisions, called EJ40, is also the establishment of an interagency working group for coal and power plant communities and economic revitalization. And in a nutshell, it's to make sure that we're not leaving communities behind. Those that, you know, are perhaps coal communities, mining communities around the country, everywhere from Appalachia to the Four Corners region, and Navajo and Hopi Nations, and the Crow Nation, and Montana, Wyoming, and, you know, really all across the country these communities that would see a big change in the economic future for them. And so that interagency working group has 11 different federal agencies all putting resources together, working boots on the ground with communities to make sure that their pathway to participate in the clean energy future is assisted and paved for them. So lots of components across the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, and Chips and Science Act, and in fact it's a huge portfolio across our 11 agencies. We have just shy of $600 billion of various aid packages, tax credits, and loan guarantees, and financial assistance, and big major infrastructure projects, and everything from broadband to carbon capture.

- There's a ton of work happening, not just in sort of the technology and energy, you know, the changing face of energy, but also in, as you said, ensuring that the communities that are involved in work today aren't left behind in transition with the future of that energy. So there's a lot going on.

- There is, there is. And it all, you know, ties back to the technologies and innovations that we, in the National Lab system, come up with. And you know, I know we'll talk at length about this, but the road that we're paving toward decarbonization of our economy, I mean, it's a long road. We're looking at decarbonizing the economy in the next 27 years. The workforce that we're gonna need to be participating in this, both at the National Labs, and across the private sector is incredible. You know, we're looking at trillions of dollars of investment in new deployment, of new technologies, and new innovations. And so having that pipeline of STEM talent is just incredible. And certainly we, you know, there'll be lots of footprint by the ORISE team.

- Absolutely, and that brings me to why you and I are having this conversation, is you have, if I understand correctly, you have been an ORISE participant, but you also bring in ORISE's research program participants, which we do throughout the National Laboratory System, but to the NETL program specifically, to be part of the research that looks at innovating and changing, you know, the face of energy as it exists today, so that we can be ready for decarbonizing the energy system and preparing for what that future looks like.

- Well, Michael, that's right. I got my start in the Department of Energy system as an ORISE faculty fellow. That was my foot in the door to working with NETL. For the last 17 years I've worked in various capacities at NETL. And it all started with an ORISE faculty fellowship that got me into the laboratory to work hand in hand with researchers, senior and junior researchers across NETL, and eventually built a collaborative program between, I was a faculty member at a local university at West Virginia University. And as I was building my research program as a new faculty member, I was doing it in just deep collaboration with the laboratory. And it was, in a way that, you know, with the ORISE fellowship, that was a bit seamless. It was hard to determine where the university group would end and where the National Lab group would start. And I think it was very healthy. It was a great way to get my start at NETL and be a contributor to NETL's mission as an ORISE faculty member. And then I had a lot of students, you know, I spent, I guess there was about 12 years at the university, and had a number of my own students who then would be ORISE participants at the laboratory, and then now in the last, just shy four and a half years at the lab, is certainly a robust partnership with ORISE participants at the lab. And again, a key contributor to our workforce development and a pipeline, but then even, maybe not the pipeline to the lab, but a pipeline to the economy that we need. Like I was saying, we need a huge influx of new talent to achieve the goals we have.

- Absolutely. And I know those of us at ORISE are excited to be part of, as we have for, since our own founding, you know, being part of helping build that pipeline and bringing people and exciting young people about the opportunities that exist in the STEM fields and in the National Laboratory system, and really throughout the federal government. How critical are programs like ORISE, research participation programs, to get people excited, you know, young researchers, folks who are just sort of getting their feet wet. How important is that to building that pipeline?

- Well, really, it's critical just to, you know, put a real fine point on it. But I'll give a a little bit of an example. Even just a few weeks ago as I, you know, periodically do, you know, walkarounds the laboratory and get to know researchers the lab. The excitement and enthusiasm and passion of researchers that you find, in particular, you know, whether it's ORISE fellows, or postdocs, or even faculty fellows is critical to the diversity of thoughts and ideas that are existing in a laboratory. And so I was meeting with an ORISE postdoc in a very exciting laboratory, really pushing the cutting edge of the connection between microbiology and the subsurface science and the potential for hydrogen storage and the effects of microorganisms in the subsurface. And to be able to bring together in what, for us, has to be a multidisciplinary environment, to be able to bring in new and fresh ideas, and whether it's early career researchers, or faculty fellows, as I came in, to be able to reach out and bring in that diversity of thought and diversity of ideas into what we operate in the National Lab space is, almost by definition, has to be multidisciplinary, because our solutions are gonna be multidisciplinary. I think that is one critical aspect of it. The other critical aspect is that, you know, this is an all hands on deck effort to decarbonize the economy. And when we think of that all hands on deck, we need to bring in as much richness of new ideas as as possible. And so to have all of the tools at our disposal to bring new blood into this challenge is critical to us. So I'll go back to that word, critical.

- Yeah. Yeah. And I've talked to you a number of, you know, ORISE research program participants over the years. And what I hear over and over again is exactly what you just talked about in terms of collaboration and new ideas, and you know, it's never gonna be just one thing, right? It's never gonna be just one scientific discipline. It's gonna be it, as you said, it's gonna be all hands on deck. It's gonna be everybody. Brian, where in your life, were you interested in science at a young age? Did that come to you later?

- No, it was in fact very, very young. You know, both of my parents were teachers when I was born, you know, but then my father, in the energy crisis in the late 70s joined the energy sector. And was basically doing chemistry in the oil fields in Appalachia, frankly, out the back of the car in our garage or in the basement. And, so I started, you know, being his little apprentice at an extremely young age, learning, you know, learning one, about energy, and two about chemistry, and a little bit about engineering. And I do recall very specifically, after a math filled day in third grade in elementary school, I was asked by the local radio station what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I said I was gonna be a chemical engineer.

- In third grade.

- In third grade. And I didn't deviate from that, not even once. Except for, you know, some thoughts around becoming a singer. But that's a whole different story.

- Whole other conversation, right? So your dad was your first mentor?

- He was, absolutely. And so following him around in the energy sector, I mean, I learned a lot about our energy production and use and you know, certainly that was a... I was born into the fossil sector. I, you know, grandfather was an underground coal miner as well. And certainly that was, you know, part of my legacy. But he was certainly my first mentor.

- Talk about other mentors that came in and bored themselves into, you know, your education. Obviously not everyone has a dad that, you know, sort of kickstarts their career, but, you know, were there high school teachers, even elementary school teachers that-

- Oh, there certainly were. I was extremely lucky in the public schools that I went to, you know, from elementary school, you know, the science teacher who was teaching us to dissect animals, to then, certainly, you know, I had a mentor in high school who was a science teacher, both biology and chemistry, who would spend her summers at the Woods Hole Institute working with James Watson, and then come back to small town West Virginia, in Ripley West Virginia and teach us, you know, really the cutting edge science, and how science is not stagnant and it keeps moving forward. And so I had those mentors, and then, you know, throughout college, professors. And then very lucky to have a faculty advisor as a PhD student who actually sat on the advisory boards of two different National Laboratories as well. And so I got fed that in. And then I would have to say, even as an ORISE brand new faculty member, I went straight from a PhD to a faculty position. And so effectively I was doing a postdoc at the same time as I was starting on my lab. And I had, as an ORISE faculty at NETL, had a couple mentors at the laboratory that really helped me build my own research group, understand how to build new experimental capabilities. And so I got a lot out of that as well, that mentorship as an ORISE faculty member.

- That's amazing. It sounds like a great career progression, great group of people that have been part of your career trajectory and helping you get to where you are today.

- It is, and and that's, you know, one of the huge values of the ORISE program, I would say is that, you know, when you have passionate mentors that are working hand in hand with ORISE participants, that is where there is so much, you know, knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer. But then, you know, opportunities to continue to grow and have, you know, the mentee be the mentor later.

- Right, well, and so I was just gonna ask, and based on what you said before about sort of doing walkthroughs through the lab and getting excited about some of the students that are doing research at the lab, I assume you are mentor for other people and having had that opportunity, many times, I would assume, in the role that you have today. And getting to where you are.

- Yes, absolutely. I try to, you know, the way I operate is to try to develop others. In fact, you know, my wife is a Gallup Strengths Finder coach, and you know, we talk a lot about strengths, and one of mine is a developer. And that is inherently, I mean, I've spent years, decades as a teacher and a professor, and that was obviously part of what I did in my past. And that certainly carries over today. Now, unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of time to spend in the laboratory. But any chance I get to interact with our researchers, I want to encourage them and try to be a mentor at each and every opportunity I have throughout the day. And I'll tell you what, Michael, the days that I enjoy the most are the ones where I actually have that opportunity. You know, there's a lot of stuff that National Lab directors have to do in administration, but it really is the days that I have a chance to spend a little bit of time in the laboratory are the ones that I enjoy more than any other day of the week.

- Because you get to interact with those researchers, and you get to see firsthand what they're working on and be part of those conversations, right?

- Yes, and the passion is contagious. So when I can, you know, I understand that, you know, folks, yesterday coming up with new materials for carbon capture. Yesterday I was in the laboratory. And the level of excitement of the new materials and scaffolds that they're building that truly have that chance in, you know, the coming years to change the globe, and the passions they're bringing to that every single day. You know, it reminds me of why I'm doing this job.

- And it sounds like, as we've been talking, the opportunities really are endless in terms of where young researchers, where faculty researchers, postdocs can engage in the future of energy and have experiences like, you know, being able to ignite the passion that you just talked about in terms of, here's a new material, here's something we've never done before. And, you know, looking forward to how can we get to the, you know, carbon-free future, but also, you know, keep energizing the country?

- Well, that's exactly right. And to span the entire spectrum from true discovery research. You know, no more basic than discovery research , or basic research, applied, use inspired, all the way out to, you know, many opportunities that head toward the commercialization space. We have to have, as a country, right now, it is no more imperative than at any other point in time that we must ensure that that entire innovation chain, from discovery science to deployment is filled with passion, and filled with passionate individuals. And so when you're talking about the diversity of opportunities, it isn't only in different technologies. You know, folks can get excited about material science or they can get excited about, you know, truly applied research in direct capture, or carbon capture, or in, you know, higher efficiency solar or wind. But then there's the other part of the matrix, is all the way from discovery to deployment. And so there is something for everyone. And that's why an ORISE gives you a chance to plug into that innovation ecosystem somewhere and then explore, and maybe pop out and have another opportunity somewhere else across that whole ecosystem matrix that we just described, and find what it is that they're gonna be passionate about to work in their future.

- It sounds like it's an amazing time to be at NETL.

- I think so.

- And if folks are listening who are interested in ORISE research program opportunities, obviously they can go to the ORISE website and see what's going on at NETL, and find some of those opportunities and apply for and get plugged into them. Brian, is there anything we haven't talked about that you wanna make sure we get across to folks while we're talking?

- You know, one of the things is, is that, well, so actually, you know, two things. When I first came to NETL, we were often referred to as a hidden jewel, or hidden gem. And in my very first, you know, public speaking engagement in 2018 about NETL was, we can no longer be hidden. And so, you know, I really appreciate the opportunity to get the word out about what we're doing. But then the second piece is, you know, while we have been working in the carbon space, whether it's coal or oil or natural gas, for 113 years, you know, our mission is extremely broad at NETL, and it really is about charting the path forward to a sustainable future, and doing it in a way that it is sustainable economically, we have reliable and resilient energy supply, and hitting our much needed climate goals. So, you know, folks may have thought of NETL as the coal lab, but we are so much more than that. And so that's one. You know, one thing I just want to wanna mention, because, you know, it is the passionate ideas about how to get this energy transition right, and ensure that we are meeting the climate goals that we need to as a globe, if you want to really get down into the meat of the problems and, you know, we're a great place to come.

- Awesome. It sounds so much like that. And I hope that folks who are listening will look at plugging themselves into the work that is happening at NETL and the future of energy in the country. Bryan, last question for you. What brings you joy?

- Well, on a daily basis, it's my six year old. And whether we're playing catch or playing basketball or he is doing karate on me, practicing his karate on me. That that is one. I do also, you know, from the work perspective, you know, what brings me joy is to support the great scientists and engineers that we have here at the laboratory, because I know that they're trying to make the world a better place and have a positive impact on people's lives. And because having that positive impact on people's lives brings me a lot of joy as well. And so, and then the last I alluded to singing, it is really a passion of mine. And I've actually had the great opportunity of singing with some of the world's greatest orchestras, like the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And that is truly a passion of mine. And so it's always great to, you know, have a well-rounded life and hold onto what brings you joy. So that's a great question to ask, Michael.

- That sounds definitely like a well-rounded answer, too. You know, the work, the passion, for music, family. You can't beat it, right? Thank you so much, Brian, for being part of the ORISE Featurecast today. I really appreciate the time.

- Michael, I appreciate it as well. Thank you for the opportunity.

- Thank you so much.

- [Announcer] Thank you for listening to the ORISE Featurecast. To learn more about the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, visit orise.orau.gov, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @ORISEConnect. If you like the ORISE Featurecast, give us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education is managed by ORAU for the US Department of Energy.