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Thandie Moyo, assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering, will give a public talk, “From Ore to Metal: Designing efficient extraction pathways with mineralogical and geochemical precision,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 6, in 112 Walker Building at Penn State University Park.

Sarma Pisupati, director of the Center for Critical Minerals (C2M) and professor of energy and mineral engineering and chemical engineering at Penn State, will give a public talk, “Securing Domestic Critical Mineral Supply Chains: Penn State’s Efforts from Lab to Pilot-Scale,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 15, in 112 Walker Building at Penn State University Park.

Chandima Sudantha Subasinghe, a doctoral degree candidate in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, received the SME Ph.D. Fellowship grant from the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME). The fellowship program is designed to support exceptional students pursuing academic careers in the fields of mining or extractive metallurgy.

Nelson Dzade, Virginia S. and Philip L. Walker, Jr. Faculty Fellow in Materials Science and Engineering and the Fuel Sciences at Penn State, recently participated in the African School on Electronic Structure Methods and Applications (ASESMA), held in June at the University of Ghana.

Oil produced from shale reservoirs drove record crude output in the U.S. over the past decade, but inefficiencies in extraction often leave as much as 90% of the oil behind, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

Phones, laptops, and electric cars all run on a single silvery metal that is tough to get out of the ground. Conventional techniques roast lithium-rich rocks at blast-furnace temperatures, soak them in acid, and burn through hours of energy, cash, and time. Now, researchers say there is a simpler, faster route that works with little more than water and a pantry-grade chemical.

Two faculty members in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences have been awarded the prestigious U.S.-Africa Frontiers Fellowships by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to build high-impact research collaboration and strengthen capacity building with African scientists. In addition, three African scientists will be visiting Penn State.

Ten interdisciplinary research teams have received funding through the Institute of Energy and the Environment’s (IEE) 2025 Seed Grant Program. The program supports basic and applied research that lays the groundwork to pursue external funding and is guided by IEE’s five research themes. This year, the program awarded seed funding to 34 Penn State researchers across seven colleges and 17 departments and units.

Eight research projects have been selected for support from the Penn State Commercialization GAP Fund. The GAP Fund is a competitive internal program designed to help promising technologies bridge the gap between academic research and industry adoption. 

Six Penn State students recently won a first-place award in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solar District Cup division, the second consecutive first-place division win for the University. The national collegiate competition challenges multidisciplinary student teams to design and model distributed energy systems for a campus or district, learning the industry-relevant skills to become leaders in clean energy. There were 81 teams participating in the competition.