John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering | Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences

Three faculty from Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Three faculty from Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering

Steven Koller, postdoctoral fellow in climate and housing at Harvard University, will give the talk, “The Willingness to Pay for Vehicle Flood Insurance,” at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 19, in 157 Hosler Building on the University Park campus.

A delegation from the Shandong University of Science and Technology with Lee Kump, John Leone Dean in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State, and Shimin Liu, the George H., Jr. and Anne B. Deike Chair in Mining Engineering and professor of energy and mineral engineering.

Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and Shandong University of Science and Technology in China have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to pursue collaborative research, teaching and educational opportunities. The goal of the MOU is to strengthen and disseminate research outcomes in environmental and safety sciences and mining engineering.

Pamela Jagger, an applied political economist whose research focuses on the dynamics of poverty and environment interactions in low-income countries, will give the talk, “Pathways to Household Energy Transitions in Africa,” at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 5, in 157 Hosler Building on Penn State's University Park campus. Her talk is part of the spring Initiative for Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy (EEEPI) seminar series and is free and open to the public.

Fields of evaporation ponds used to extract lithium in the Atacama desert in Chile, South America.

With an electric current and hydrogen peroxide, researchers at Penn State have developed a more efficient way to extract lithium, a key component in the batteries used in electric vehicles and portable electric devices, directly from ore found in the common mineral spodumene. The process could facilitate a 35.6% reduction in cost and a 75.3% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to traditional, less sustainable extraction methods, according to the team, led by Feifei Shi, assistant professor of energy engineering at Penn State.

EME students toured the Blyvoor Gold Mine in Carltonville, South Africa to observe every process stage, including smelting, which removes impurities from the ore to produce pure gold

Three Penn State energy and mineral engineering doctoral students traveled 8,176 miles from University Park to South Africa to attend the Mintek@90 Conference last fall. Hosted by Mintek, one of South Africa's leading mineral research organizations, the group presented research and introduced Penn State as a strategic research partner to South African academic and industrial leaders.

Shweta Bhogale, postdoctoral fellow at MIT, will give the talk, “Run on the Reservoir: Evidence on Administrative Competition for Groundwater in India,” at noon. on Wednesday, Feb. 12, in 157 Hosler Building at Penn State University Park.

Shweta Bhogale, postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will give the talk, “Run on the Reservoir: Evidence on Administrative Competition for Groundwater in India,” at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 12, in 157 Hosler Building at Penn State University Park.