Registration is now open for the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering’s annual "MINING ROCKS!" summer camp. The camp will be held on Penn State's University Park Campus on July 12–17.
Superconductors — materials that can conduct electricity without energy loss — are crucial for next-generation high-efficiency, ultrafast electronics. However, most superconductors share a critical limitation: they lose their superconducting properties in strong magnetic fields.
Hilal Ezgi Toraman, assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering and of chemical engineering at Penn State, is one of five faculty recognized as a rising star in chemical engineering by the journal ACS Engineering Au for her work developing fundamental research on the utilization of pyrolysis — a chemical recycling process that heats plastic waste in an oxygen-free environment to turn it into valuable fuels, chemicals and new plastic feedstock.
Nelson Dzade, assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering and chair of the undergraduate energy engineering program at Penn State, recently co-chaired the critical minerals and materials session at the annual National Academies U.S.-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Symposium, held this past February in Dakar, Senegal.
Penn State has named the inaugural Innovation to Impact Awards recipients, recognizing faculty, researchers, entrepreneurs and partners whose work exemplifies the University’s commitment to translating research into real-world impact.
Presented by the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research, the awards celebrate achievements in inventorship, commercialization, entrepreneurship and strategic partnerships over the previous year. Honorees were recognized during an awards gala held at the Nittany Lion Inn on March 25.
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.
Recent points of distinction among EMS Energy Institute faculty associates and affiliates
Ayala: promotion to department head
Luis F. Ayala
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.”
Dahi Taleghani and Rezaee: Commercialization GAP Fund support
Arash Dahi Taleghani, left, and Mohammad Rezaee
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.
Dzade: Early Career Research Award
Nelson Y. Dzade
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.”
Dzade and Doumon: U.S.-Africa Frontiers Fellowships
Nutifafa Y. Doumon
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.
Emami-Meybodi: Society of Petroleum Engineers Distinguished Membership
Hamid Emami-Meybodi
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.
Mittal: Packard Fellowship
Tushar Mittal
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.”
Pisupati: Distinguished Alumnus Award
Sarma V. Pisupati
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.