Welcome to the winter 2018 edition of the EMS Energy Institute (EI) Newsletter. This edition showcases faculty research in several topical areas, introduces new employees, and highlights the honors received by our students, faculty, and staff.
The research, education, and outreach efforts of the institute continues to focus on energy and energy-related environmental effects and involves researchers in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and the College of Engineering along with collaborators worldwide. Current research projects cover the production and use of energy along with carbon dioxide capture, storage, and utilization. Since our last newsletter, published three years ago, 112 new external research projects have been established and supported with more than $22.5 million in funding. During the past ten years, papers published in peer-reviewed journals by EI researchers have grown from twenty-six in 2008 to ninety-eight in 2017. Citations of publications by EI researchers have also increased over the past ten years from about 600 citations in 2007 to about 4,300 in 2017, according to the Web of Science. Those figures reflect our growth as an institute with more faculty and visiting scholars working in our labs, our increased presence at domestic and international conferences, researchers being awarded more industry and government funded projects, along with the ability to collaborate with researchers outside of Penn State through travel or online communication.
The past few years we have experienced exciting changes in the EI with the addition of new faculty and staff members, who are introduced beginning on page twelve, but we also saw two staff members, Cindy Anders and Gary Mitchell, retire in 2017, and Angel Johnson move to another position at the University. Cindy worked in the front office for fifteen years supporting students, faculty, and staff members before retirement while Angel moved to the Office of the Corporate Controller in fall of 2017 after five years at the EI. Gary worked at Penn State for thirty-two years leading optical petrology research on coal and coke along with managing the Coal Sample Bank. We thank all of them for their many contributions. Since 2017, we have gained three new staff members: Christy English and Ashley Comly replaced Cindy and Angel, respectively, and Karlin Andersen serves as our new editor and writer.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the EI faculty members, research staff, students, and visiting scholars whose ideas and hard work have advanced energy science and engineering research, resulting in many publications as well as awards and honors. I also want to thank our staff members whose hard work supports our faculty-driven research efforts. In closing, I hope you will find the contents of this issue interesting. Please let us know if you have any suggestions or comments.
Dr. Chunshan Song
Director, EMS Energy Institute
Associate Director, IEE
Distinguished Professor of Fuel Science and Chemical Engineering