NOTE: The following release was sent from Oak Ridge Associated Universities, a Knoxville Chamber member.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn.—Two Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) employees, Occupational Health Registered Nurse Sally Gadola and Project Manager Mikki Prater, are among only 27 individuals chosen this June by the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (PCPFS) to receive a 2008 PCPFS Community Leadership Award. The national award is given annually to those who improve the lives of others within their community by providing or enhancing opportunities to engage in sports, physical activities or fitness-related programs.
“We are honored to present this award to Ms. Gadola and Ms. Prater,” said Melissa Johnson, PCPFS executive director. “Physical activity and sports participation are an important part of living a healthy, more active life, and we are pleased to recognize these two women for their commitment to making a difference and influencing the health of their communities.”
As head of ORAU’s Occupational Health Department, Gadola oversees many daily responsibilities that help ensure the health and wellness of the company’s more than 900 employees. However, it was Gadola’s effort beyond those expectations that ultimately led to her most recent recognition.
“Sally is extremely successful at showcasing the need for employees to think, act, and be healthy in all aspects of mind, body and spirituality,” said ORAU Vice President of Human Resources Dan Standley. “Her unrelenting drive to educate employees about the importance of health and wellness has resulted in numerous special guest presentations, the establishment of several company-wide health competitions, as well as regular opportunities for employees to participate in local blood donation drives.”
Prater has also led an inspiring initiative to encourage ORAU employees to adopt healthier lifestyles. She began by organizing a team of 26 co-workers to participate in a variety of walking, running and hiking activities. Later, Prater was able to negotiate free trial passes to a local gym for her team members to try the fitness-center environment, risk free. Prater also created homemade, healthy meals and shared the finished products with her co-workers to demonstrate that healthy food can taste delicious.
“Mikki has done a great deal to motivate and establish a healthy mindset for her co-workers and did so by sacrificing much of her personal time to organize, cook, plan and shop,” said Standley. “In our company’s recent wellness competition, six of the top 10 finalists and over 50 percent of the top 25 individuals were from Mikki’s team. These statistics alone demonstrate the profound, positive impact that Mikki’s efforts have had on her colleagues.”
ORAU President Ron Townsend notes that as a company that places extreme importance on the health and wellness of its employees, ORAU applauds Gadola and Prater’s efforts for helping continue a corporate culture rich in health awareness activities.
“ORAU constantly strives to promote a work environment in which employees are conscious about healthy lifestyle choices,” said Townsend. “Sally and Mikki’s infectious enthusiasm has brought awareness of healthy living to many ORAU employees and has certainly helped influence ORAU’s recognition as being one of Tennessee’s top employers for 2007 and 2008. We’re very proud of both of them.”
The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (PCPFS) is an advisory committee of volunteer citizens who advise the President through the Secretary of Health and Human Services about physical activity, fitness and sports in America. The Office of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (PCPFS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is the HHS office containing the PCPFS Executive Director and support staff. Through its programs and partnerships with the public, private and nonprofit sectors, the Office of the PCPFS serves as a catalyst to promote health, physical activity, fitness and enjoyment for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities through participation in physical activity and sports. For more information about PCPFS please visit fitness.gov.
Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is a university consortium leveraging the scientific strength of 99 major research institutions to advance science and education by partnering with national laboratories, government agencies, and private industry. ORAU manages the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for the U.S. Department of Energy. For more information about ORAU, please visit orau.org.
Note: This release was sent from ORAU, a Knoxville Chamber member.
As Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) reaches petascale computing on the order of 1,000 trillion calculations per second over the coming year, Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is positioning its university partners to take full advantage of these ultrascale computing resources for scientific discovery.
During the recent annual meeting of its Council of Sponsoring Institutions, ORAU announced that it would partner with ORNL to provide funding for a competitive, high-performance computing grants program for faculty and student teams.* The grants for each team would be $75,000 for three years ($25,000 for the first year with options to renew for two additional years at a combined total of $75,000), with two grants awarded per year.
In turn, ORNL would provide university researchers with access to its computing facilities and staff, and potentially some additional discretionary resources, in order to galvanize a partnership for successful and mutually beneficial scientific research to be performed.
The program presents an opportunity to create some institutional strategic alignment with ORNL in the scientific areas that require computational support.
“ORAU makes investments in faculty and student programs, and we align these investments with the science agenda at ORNL,” said ORAU President Ron Townsend. “Over the past several years, ORNL and Thomas Zacharia have built an impressive computational capability here at Oak Ridge, and it is our goal to provide opportunities for faculty and staff to become more intimately engaged in that resource.”
Thomas Zacharia, who is associate laboratory director for ORNL’s Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate, noted that having joint collaborations with universities in computing is absolutely critical for advances in science.
“We all become stronger if we can bring the best of what the lab has to offer coupled with the best of what the university community has to offer,” said Zacharia. “And, we have a tremendous partner in ORAU that engages graduate, undergraduate, postdoctoral students and faculty in scientific discovery through advanced computing.”
By the end of 2008, ORNL will deploy the Cray XT5 supercomputer, which is a 1 petaflops leadership-class system for science. And by 2018, the lab expects to have an exaflops system in place, which would be a thousand times faster than the petaflops Cray system. This kind of exponential growth of supercomputing allows the U.S. to sustain a competitive edge and superiority in science and technology. ORNL’s supercomputing capabilities will make scientific discovery possible for university faculty and students in the areas of superconductivity, computational biology, climate, combustion, astrophysics, and fusion, to name a few.
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