Qian Zhang, a doctoral student in Penn State’s John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering (EME), has been awarded the Nico van Wingen Memorial Graduate Fellowship in petroleum engineering by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Foundation. Zhang will receive $5,000 per year for up to four years to support her research on unconventional reservoirs and enhanced oil recovery.
The inaugural Penn State-Ghana Research Partnerships Seed Grant Program has awarded nine projects that aim to fuel global impact, including crop disease surveillance, removing heavy metals from mining wastewater and understanding multimodal traffic streams.
Associate Research Professor Joel Morrison, a member of the EMS Energy Institute for more than 25 years, retired from Penn State in June 2025. He remains the fund administrator for the West Penn Energy Fund, a nonprofit that fosters sustainable energy, and is now an associate research professor emeritus at the University.
Outdoor air pollution is estimated to contribute to more than 100,000 premature deaths in the United States each year, according to the National Weather Service. Accurate air quality forecasts — designed to protect public health, alerting communities to dangerous levels of pollutants linked to asthma attacks, heart disease and premature death — are critical for helping people limit exposure and for guiding regulatory action.
To Luis F. Ayala, mentoring sends a message.
“It’s how you make people feel welcome in a new place, tell them that we want you to succeed, and show what it takes to succeed,” says Ayala, an EMS Energy Institute faculty affiliate. “No matter where you are, having a mentor invested in someone’s success is the best way to make them feel they belong.”
That sensibility is a hallmark of Ayala’s leadership in the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, where he was named head of the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering in July 2024. He succeeds Sanjay Srinivasan, who became the Energy Institute director a year earlier.
“Our department is uniquely positioned to spearhead curricular innovation, pursue exciting research opportunities, and address many of the technical challenges inherent to the ongoing transformation of the global energy landscape,” Ayala said upon his promotion.
Lauded for contributions in research and teaching, Ayala has won honors including the University’s 2022 Howard B. Palmer Faculty Mentoring Award. It recognizes outstanding achievement by a faculty member with at least five years of service who effectively guides junior faculty.
More recently, the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) granted Ayala its Distinguished Service Award in October 2025. The William A. Fustos Family Professor in Energy and Mineral Engineering, Ayala was named a SPE Distinguished Member in 2022. His service to SPE has included a variety of committee work and the editing of technical journals.
A nonprofit with some 132,000 members, the organization serves as a bridge among universities and industry, he says.
“My work in the society reflects my desire to build community, to serve a community, and to come from a position of service,” Ayala says. “I strive to work in positive ways to bring us together in this field, define a bigger purpose, and go for it.”
Projects led by Arash Dahi Taleghani, professor of petroleum engineering, and Mohammad Rezaee, associate professor of mining engineering, both in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, are among eight research projects selected for support from the Penn State Commercialization GAP Fund in mid-2025.
Dahi Taleghani’s materials research effort is titled “Shape-Memory and Self-Assembly Materials Designed to Plug Large Fractures During Drilling.” It focuses on new materials that can change shape and organize themselves to seal large fractures that form during drilling operations for oil and gas wells. These “smart materials” could reduce fluid loss in the wells, improve safety, and make energy extraction more efficient.
Rezaee’s project is titled “Apparatus and Process for Selective Liberation and Mechanical Recycling of Electronic Waste.” It focuses on designing a mechanical process that breaks down old electronics, such as cellphones and laptops, to recover high-value materials like copper, gold, and rare earth elements. This process could lead to making electronic waste recycling cleaner, safer, and more cost-effective.
The GAP Fund is a competitive internal program designed to help promising technologies bridge the gap between academic research and industry adoption.
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Nelson Y. Dzade, assistant professor in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, a 2024 Early Career Research Award. He is using the five-year, $875,000 award to develop a multi-scale framework for predicting and understanding interfaces in solar cells.
Dzade was among 91 early-career scientists nationwide selected for the 2024 honor. His work will help identify specific bottlenecks in the performance of photovoltaic devices and help set a foundation for more efficient and stable solar cells with socio-economic and environmental benefits.
“I feel super blessed to be considered among the nation’s outstanding early research scientists who are helping tackle some of the toughest challenges and help secure the economic competitiveness of the United States for decades to come,” Dzade says. His project funded by the award is titled “Multiscale Modeling of Heteroepitaxial Interfaces for Scalable Thin-Film Solar Cell Applications.”
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine honored Nutifafa Y. Doumon and Nelson Y. Dzade in 2025 with U.S.-Africa Frontiers Fellowships. The awards assist faculty members in strengthening high-impact research collaboration and capacity-building with African scientists.
Doumon is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering and of engineering science and mechanics in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Dzade, an assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering.
As part of the fellowships, Linda Nyamen at the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon, will visit Dzade’s Materials and Mineral Theory Group. Isoken Henrietta Igbinosa, from the University of Benin, Nigeria, will be visiting the Doumon Lab, which supports research for advanced optoelectronic devices integrated into sustainable and smart water-monitoring systems.
Additionally, Dzade will chair the Critical Minerals and Materials session of the 2026 U.S.-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Symposium, to be held in partnership with Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar from Feb. 2-4 in Dakar, Senegal.
The fellowship program helps participants develop research ideas, acquire specific technical skills, and facilitate further scientific collaboration with their counterparts.
The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) in 2025 elected Hamid Emami-Meybodi, associate professor of petroleum and natural-gas engineering in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, as an SPE Distinguished Member.
Recognized at the society’s annual technical conference and exhibition in Houston, Emami-Meybodi described the honor as “a celebration of the many people who have supported and inspired me along the away.” He holds the Dr. Charles H. Bowman and Lynn A. Holleran Early Career Professorship in his department.
“Seeing past awardees, I feel humbled to join their ranks and am grateful for the supportive Penn State community that has helped me excel in research, teaching, and service,” Emami-Meybodi said.
He was cited “for his outstanding contributions to petroleum engineering education and research,” including in his role as director of the Subsurface Energy Recovery and Storage Joint Industry Partnership. Emami-Meybodi’s “leadership, prolific research in reservoir engineering, dedication to teaching, and strong administrative roles have significantly advanced the profession and inspired a generation of students and engineers,” his recognition reads.
Tushar Mittal, assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences, was named a 2024 Packard Fellow by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Each of the 20 recipients won $875,000 over five years to pursue research.
Including Mittal, the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences now counts three Packard Fellows, recognized for their innovation, ideas, and determination. The Mittal Lab develops innovative tools that combine geophysical fluid dynamics, rock mechanics, remote sensing, and Earth system modeling to improve detection and understanding of volcanism.
Mittal’s research funded by the fellowship will address the key scientific challenge to understanding submarine volcanism: characterizing underwater eruptions globally by estimating their size, gas and fluid emissions, and spatiotemporal patterns.
More recently, in November 2025, Mittal received $75,000 in seed funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support a collaborative project on critical minerals. The effort seeks to make mining more efficient through a new method: the Pulsed Ore Process System, which relies largely on acoustic energy to target raw materials in demand.
The project’s title is “Poprocks: Coupling Sound, Mechanical and Chemical Dissolution for Direct & Selective Ore Extraction.”
The Osmania University College of Technology Alumni Association honored Sarma V. Pisupati, a faculty member in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, with its Distinguished Alumnus Award in December 2025.
Pisupati directs the Center for Critical Minerals at Penn State, where he is a professor of energy and mineral engineering and chemical engineering. He has studied and taught energy and environmental issues for four decades and worked in industry before joining Penn State. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Osmania—one of India’s oldest universities—and a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology before earning his doctoral degree from Penn State.
The inaugural chair of Penn State’s program in energy engineering, Pisupati has research interests ranging from oxy-fuel combustion and chemical looping combustion to the extraction of critical and rare-earth elements from secondary sources. He has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator on sixty-five externally funded scientific research projects and has coauthored more than 225 research publications.
Among his appearances in 2025, Pisupati spoke on the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast.
With federal agencies rolling out nearly $1 billion for critical minerals and materials (CMM) development, a December 2025 convening at Penn State University Park brought together about one hundred scholars, industry representatives, and government experts with a central goal: cooperation.
Drawing on the University’s historic strengths across industry and the public sector is pivotal as momentum grows for domestic CMM supply chains, participants said at the two-day assembly. Hosted at research facilities and the Bryce Jordan Center, it was the latest Penn State gathering to promote partnerships and collaborations among business, academic, and government interests in minerals and materials development in the U.S. The EMS Energy Institute led the event amid multi-million-dollar funding opportunities that the Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and others announced recently to bolster CMMs, now sourced mostly abroad.
To read the full story from Penn State News: bit.ly/4bwXnkH.
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 percent of the oil behind, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
To help maximize production from the tightly packed formations of shale rock, a team of researchers at Penn State developed a new oil extraction workflow that may improve shale oil recovery up to an additional 15 percent while providing long-term storage for carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. The workflow was successfully implemented for the Texas Eagle Ford Shale, where it demonstrated improvement in oil extraction, the researchers say, explaining that it can be expanded for application in other shale reservoirs.
They reported their findings in the journal Fuel. The innovation centers on improving cyclic CO₂ injection, a process in which CO₂ is pumped into the reservoir to enhance oil production. Hamid Emami-Meybodi, associate professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering, faculty associate in the EMS Energy Institute, and lead author of the paper, compared the underground shale environment to a sponge.
To read the full story from Penn State News: bit.ly/4a2jE93.
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar generation now account for over 20 percent of electricity in the U.S.—and keep growing after large-scale production more than doubled since 2000. Still, high-profile power failures illustrate persistent challenges from the lack of available capacity to provide enough energy at times of need, says Chiara Lo Prete, associate professor of energy economics in the John and Willie Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State.
The issue isn’t insufficient generation but an unreliable ability to deliver ample power when customer use spikes, particularly where renewable resources and natural gas dominate power production, says Lo Prete, a faculty associate of the EMS Energy Institute. To better support the clean-energy transition, she and colleagues at a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit studied eleven electricity market design proposals under consideration by grid operators. These designs put forward different approaches to guide energy generation and sources, as well as use across every sector of the energy market.
To read the full story from Penn State News: bit.ly/3Mh5N5u.
Across the EMS Energy Institute, preparing next-generation leaders in energy research and industry means engaging them in hands-on projects, empowering their ideas, and positioning them alongside faculty advisers.
In 2025, the works of doctoral candidates Miao Jin and Souk Yoon (John) Kim showcased the central role of up-and-coming students in the institute community. Jin coauthored a study to boost oil production from Permian shale wells during gas-lift operations, while Kim led a paper on a promising solid additive for organic photovoltaics.
The latter study appeared in a special issue of the journal ACS Materials Au recognizing “2025 Rising Stars in Material Science.” Kim, who is a student in the Penn State Department of Materials Science and Engineering, began examining solar cells during his undergraduate studies and is interested in eventually translating his research into industry applications.
“Laptop computers and electric vehicles are examples of applications that could potentially benefit from a new generation of lightweight, flexible solar technologies,” Kim says.
The key to enabling these applications, he explains, lies in improving the efficiency and long-term stability of thin, lightweight solar cells at larger scales, such as the organic photovoltaics he researches with his faculty adviser, Nutifafa Doumon, an affiliate of the Energy Institute.
Doumon and Kim co-led the paper in ACS Materials Au, which explores the viability of a solid additive, 9,10-phenanthrenequinone (PQ), to enhance the efficiency and long-term stability of organic photovoltaics. Distinct from silicon solar cells—which are a dominant solar technology—emerging organic solar cells tend to be more flexible, lighter, and less expensive to manufacture.
But they also tend to degrade and lose efficiency more quickly, among other drawbacks. Doumon and Kim found that PQ marginally improved efficiency while reducing degradation of organic solar cells, “helping devices retain over 90 percent of their original efficiency under sustained heat,” as Kim notes. Less degradation translates to better stability.
“Using PQ means more reliable and longer-lasting organic solar cells without complex synthesis or toxic processing,” says Kim, who advocated for the study. “We see incorporating PQ as a practical pathway toward sustainable, scalable, and more durable organic photovoltaic technologies, as also indicated by one of the paper’s reviewers.”
Honored repeatedly for his research and leadership, Kim coordinated the 2025 Energy Innovations symposium, held at the Energy Institute in April and led by graduate students. In September 2025, a paper co-led by Kim and Doumon was recognized in the 2025 “Emerging Investigators” collection of the Journal of Materials Chemistry C. The paper appears among the journal’s thirty most popular articles for the year.
Kim also helped secure a research grant through the Next-Generation Science and Technology Leaders Program by the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies. And he was nominated to attend the 2025 CERAWeek by S&P Global conference as part of the inaugural NextGen cohort, with support from the Energy Institute.
Jin studies in the Penn State John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering and has been a representative on its Graduate Student Council. His research focuses on machine-learning models that can be utilized for improving oil recovery from shale reservoirs.
With his faculty adviser, Energy Institute affiliate Hamid Emami-Meybodi, Jin published a paper in the journal Energy & Fuels in July 2025. Their study focused on an expensive problem for the oil industry: rapid decline in oil production from the shale wells in unconventional reservoirs.
Industry operators use the technique known as gas lift to improve oil recovery as reservoir pressure drops around the wellbore, increasing the oil rates from multi-fractured horizontal wells in shales like the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico. But it’s a persistent challenge to predict and measure the pressure changes at the bottom of these deep wells that signal when to begin gas lift, Jin explains. Poor timing can limit extraction, impede efficiency, and cost significant money.
Jin and Emami-Meybodi used field data from twenty-one shale wells in the Permian Basin to develop models that predict bottomhole pressure. Their machine-learning approach promises to help well productivity and demonstrates how advanced, data-driven models can address similar problems in the field, says Jin, who specializes in petroleum engineering.
Over the longer term, he hopes to apply data science and machine learning for industry uses, perhaps in areas of new energy as well.
“There’s no limitation for the application of advancements in data science,” says Jin, who has worked as an intern for Chevron. “It’s the future of energy.”
This research took shape as part of the Subsurface Energy Recovery and Storage (SERS) Joint Industry Partnership directed by Emami-Meybodi.
Russell Johns, a faculty affiliate of the EMS Energy Institute and a former interim head of the Penn State Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, retired from the University in 2025. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2025, he held the George E. Trimble Chair of Energy and Mineral Sciences and was a professor of petroleum and natural-gas engineering.
Associate Research Professor Joel Morrison, a member of the EMS Energy Institute for more than 25 years, retired from Penn State in June 2025. He remains the fund administrator for the West Penn Energy Fund, a nonprofit that fosters sustainable energy, and is now an associate research professor emeritus at the University.
After more than forty years in the oil and gas industry, the world-wide need for energy has never been more clear to Jerry Berkebile.
A 1977 graduate of the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) in petroleum and natural gas engineering, Berkebile built his long career in various engineering and management positions as well as leading multiple exploration-based companies.
Today, he notes, the demands of economic development, global population growth, artificial intelligence, and advanced living standards are amplifying the role of plentiful, reliable and affordable energy. Electricity demand alone is forecast to increase by as much as three-quarters worldwide by 2050, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
At the EMS Energy Institute, Berkebile and his wife, Pat, see the trends as a moment for international leadership—a chance to redouble the institute’s research momentum and strengthen the next generation of industry innovators. The Berkebiles recently made a generous gift to help the institute community cultivate a big new idea for energy development.
Their hope is to plant a seed that spurs invention and helps tackle soaring energy needs. Specifics remain under discussion.
“I don’t know what the next big energy idea will be, but I’ve seen in the petroleum industry that the power of one idea is huge. So many times, just one idea has changed the world,” Jerry Berkebile says. “We have so many resources in our country—and worldwide—that just one idea could double the amount of oil, nuclear energy, or another source.”
The Berkebiles are drawn in particular to the Energy Institute, where they are committed supporters. Students working with the institute “always blow us away” with their skill, talent, and dedication.
“Those of us in industry might not have the time or resources to pursue groundbreaking new ideas outside of our areas of expertise,” Jerry Berkebile says. “But the institute community does. The potential of one idea drives us.”
A recipient of the Colleen Swetland Alumni Achievement Award and the C. Drew Stahl Distinguished Achievement Award in Petroleum Engineering at Penn State, Jerry Berkebile has long engaged with the EMS community at large. Among his roles, he has been as a guest speaker and mentor; a member of the external advisory board in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering; and a participant in the Energy Crisis Leadership Challenge, a final project for an energy business and finance course. The Berkebiles also sponsor the Berkebile Family Trustee Matching Scholarship for petroleum engineering students.
Berkebile’s enthusiasm stems in part from appreciation for “what the University has done for him,” Pat Berkebile says. “He wants to pay back—or pay forward—by helping other young people pursue dreams, pursue excellence, pursue research. The University means a lot to the family.”
As undergraduates themselves, the Berkebiles benefitted from individual and corporate generosity through scholarships and internships. “We believe that when we have the opportunity to help provide for the next generation of students, we should support them,” Jerry Berkebile says.
Sanjay Srinivasan, the Energy Institute director, says the Berkebiles’ involvement illustrates the importance of engagement from outside the lab and classroom. The couple exemplifies a collaborative sensibility that helps define the institute, including among alumni and in industry relationships, Srinivasan says.
“Jerry and Pat’s insights, worldly experiences, and thoughtful generosity in so many areas are a vital difference-maker for students and faculty,” Srinivasan says. “We’re grateful for our bonds with them—they are truly part of the family here. Their reach is incalculable.”
A life member of the Penn State Alumni Association and part of the EMS Obelisk Society, Jerry Berkebile is the president of Colt Hill Resources LLC. The independent oil and gas company is based in Midland, Texas, where the Berkebiles have lived more than thirty years.
Jerry Berkebile is a longtime petroleum engineer and business owner, having founded or co-founded successful oil companies. He also worked twenty-five years in management and engineering roles at Marathon Oil, both domestic and international.
He emphasizes access to energy as a core part of expanding healthy living standards, adequate health care, and mechanized farming and irrigation across impoverished parts of the world. Abundant energy will drive economic stability and opportunity in, for instance, areas of Africa and Southeast Asia, he says. And it will power artificial-intelligence projects in areas such as Western Pennsylvania, where Berkebile grew up.
“As worldwide energy demand surges and we ask, ‘Where’s the next big opportunity for supply?’ — the answer begins at Penn State’s Energy Institute,” he says.
Across the EMS Energy Institute, facilities underpinning faculty and student research at University Park have seen substantial upgrades over the last several years. Often supported by industry partners, this critical infrastructure enables the innovations that help define the institute.
In the Coal Utilization Lab, on the eastern end of the campus, Room 216 East is open to all students and faculty affiliated with the institute. Newer equipment there includes:
Meanwhile, the Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance (SCIA), supported by the institute, is employing an array of advanced technology to cultivate and refine silicon carbide crystals used in electronics and industrial applications. Equipment in the SCIA lab space, which opened in 2025, includes:
Elsewhere among the institute’s newer facilities, the Center for Critical Minerals employs a series of tanks with differing pH levels, together allowing minerals to be filtered from acid mine drainage and purified for use by partner organizations. The center was running pilot-scale operations in 2025.
A half-dozen students affiliated with the EMS Energy Institute presented research in March 2025 at the five-day CERAWeek by S&P Global, recognized internationally as a top energy conference. More than 10,000 people, including industry executives, researchers, and government leaders, attend the annual event in Houston.
Penn State students highlighted their work ranging from solar energy cells to fossil fuels and hydrogen production, says James W. Heim II, a graduate student in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering. He presented on hydrogen production via a process known as thermo-catalytic decomposition of methane.
“I was able to see that a lot of the bigger companies are actually working on the same project that I’m working on,” Heim says. “That was affirming. And we delved into trends in energy, technologies, policy, and what’s coming to fruition quickly. I discovered technologies like renewable-energy storage seem closer to fruition than the proposed hydrogen economy.”
Such insight and networking are especially helpful as students approach the job market, says Heim, who is pursuing a doctoral degree in energy engineering. “It was inspirational to see larger companies working toward sustainable solutions to climate change.”
More than a half-dozen Penn State students organized and presented in a research symposium that the EMS Energy Institute hosted in April 2025 at University Park. Led largely by doctoral students Souk Yoon (John) Kim and James W. Heim II, the gathering emerged from earlier poster events to incorporate a robust combination of research presentations and remarks. Catharine Cyr Ransom, a Penn State alumna and partner at FGS Global, and six University faculty members served as speakers.
“The symposium provided a new platform for students across departments and labs to make new connections, explore their research, and support one another,” Kim explains. “It also afforded us leadership experience in developing and executing an event of this type. We supported our sense of community at the same time we reinforced each other’s research and prospects for collaboration.”
Kim is positioning the event to become an annual highlight in the institute. Student honorees at the 2025 event included the participants below. All are Penn State students except where otherwise noted.
An event series led by Penn State graduate students in the EMS Energy Institute launched in fall 2025, offering three seminars spread through the semester.
Open to students and faculty, the program solicits speakers from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences who are preparing for conferences, exercising their presentation skills, or otherwise want to share research, ideas, or experiences. Each seminar features two presenters. In the fall semester, subject matter ranged from petroleum to the integration of artificial intelligence into energy systems.
Both student and faculty presenters have “showcased the intellectual breadth of our researchers in the institute,” says Samukeliso “Samu” Dube, a doctoral student in energy and mineral engineering and a series organizer. “The seminar matter is so diverse, it opens you to research outside of your own main focus.”
Encouraged by Nutifafa Y. Doumon, assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and by Energy Institute Director Sanjay Srinivasan, the series is a collaboration between the institute and the University’s Alliance for Education, Science, Engineering and Design with Africa. Dube describes the effort as an intellectual exchange among students as well as between faculty and students.
Specific goals include deeper academic engagement, skill development, and meaningful connections.
“We want to build a stronger academic community,” says Cyril Chu Fubin Kumachang, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering and a series organizer. “With attendance and participation from college leadership, students, and faculty, the events have been well received and a valuable training platform for presenters.”
Series plans for spring 2026 include seminars, a symposium, and a field trip. Doumon says faculty participation contributes to the scientific rigor in seminar discussions.
“Interaction and questions promote learning from outside your own field that could help you write a better essay or a better dissertation,” says Doumon, an adviser to the organizers. “This is a cultivation space for ideas and critical thought.”
The series’ organizing committee includes Doumon and Srinivasan as faculty members and Dube, Kumachang, Justin Lin, Komalla Nikhil, and Chandima Sudantha Subasinghe Hevapathiranage as student members.
As part of its comprehensive approach, the EMS Energy Institute supports new efficiencies and discoveries in fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects demand for oil, coal, and natural gas will peak by 2030, but their use is likely to continue for decades more.
To help minimize environmental impacts, two faculty affiliates of the institute—Kenneth J. Davis, professor of atmospheric and climate science, and Arash Dahi Taleghani, professor of petroleum engineering—are pursuing new insight around emissions and leakage, respectively.
Davis is exploring the scope and locations of methane emissions from oil and gas production and from urban settings where gas is distributed, while Dahi Taleghani is evaluating materials to prevent unwanted gas release from oil, gas, and high-temperature geothermal wells.
“A significant amount of methane is escaping from cities, but there’s been very little insight into specifically where the leaks are,” says Davis, a faculty member in the Penn State Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science. “Is it coming from distribution pipes? People’s stovetops? And how much is coming from each place?”
The primary component of natural gas, methane accounts for about 30 percent of the increase in global temperatures over the last few centuries, according to the IEA. But methane emissions are less well understood than those of another key greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, Davis explains.
Tempering methane emissions, he says, requires a working sense of where, how, and in what amounts the gas is escaping into the atmosphere. His research group currently monitors methane emissions from the Permian, the Denver-Julesburg, and the Upper Green River oil and gas production basins. Over the past fifteen years, he and colleagues—including Penn State students—have also used tower-based instruments to monitor methane and CO2 concentrations in Indianapolis.
Although collection of the Indianapolis measurements suspended in 2025 amid shifts in federal support, evaluation of the data will continue. The assessments include emissions from the commercial sector, transportation, and natural biological processes.
The former Greenhouse Gas Measurements Program, part of the National Institute for Standards and Technology, funded the Indianapolis research for fifteen years.
“We’re beginning to build what we call bottom-up models—really a process-based understanding of where we believe emissions are originating—for cities,” says Davis, director of the Earth-Atmosphere Interactions Lab at Penn State. “What we find can inform methane-mitigation strategies. If methane emissions are coming largely from the natural-gas distribution system, policymakers will have some guidance to focus there. If the emissions come from people’s homes and business, that triggers a different framing.”
Davis has used airborne and tower-based observations in a variety of greenhouse-gas studies in urban areas, oil and gas basins, and agricultural and forested landscapes. With colleagues across several institutions, he contributed to a May 2025 paper finding an unexpected seasonal cycle in methane emissions in the United States.
Wintertime emissions are about 40 percent greater than those in the summer, according to the study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Researchers can’t yet explain the pattern, but data collection across several states should lend insight, Davis says.
“Existing methane emissions estimates are often very wrong. There is a need to understand methane emissions better because we need to minimize greenhouse-gas emissions,” he adds. “If we want to know the true emissions of methane, we need independent measurements from the atmosphere.”
Dahi Taleghani, a faculty member in the Penn State Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, directs the Repurposing Center for Energy Transition, an initiative supporting the reuse of fossil-fuel infrastructure. In 2025, ReCET received several seed funds for repurposing abandoned oil and gas wells as well as abandoned mines for clean energy applications. These feasibility studies provide insights for upcycling these retired infrastructures in Pennsylvania. More recently, Dahi Taleghani won grant support from the Penn State Commercialization GAP Fund, a program helping technologies springboard from academic research to industry adoption.
The GAP-funded project centers on developing materials that can change shape and organize themselves to seal large fractures formed or identified during drilling. Known as “smart materials,” these additives to drilling fluid could reduce the loss of fluids from oil and gas wells.
“Substances in development can withstand high temperatures, expand to fill space, and create temporary seals that reduce both cost and environmental impact,” Dahi Taleghani explains. “This is essential for safety and for efficiency.”
First imagined about a decade ago, his innovation relies on what are known as shape-memory polymers. They can be compacted, twisted, or folded before recovering their original shapes.
“Basically, we use programming to make these particles smaller,” Dahi Taleghani says. “When they are exposed to zones with higher temperatures, they can expand tenfold.”
He developed the idea because conventional approaches can’t plug large, wide fractures, he says. Now in a pre-commercialization phase, the technology is ripe for industry collaboration to foster scaling-up and field trials, and it should be available for licensing.
“This is just one example that shows something from the lab can come to the market and shape the future of energy,” Dahi Taleghani says.
In related work, he led a project to compile methods for identifying, measuring, and resealing leak paths in gas storage wells. The U.S. Department of Transportation funded the comprehensive effort, which can help engineers and technicians to address different leakage scenarios. Dahi Taleghani has published several articles on the topic.
“I love to see our work from the lab impact people’s lives,” he says.
