A new approach to plastic recycling being explored at Penn State could make the process more efficient by using tiny particles of coal, according to researchers. On the latest episode of “Growing Impact,” researchers discussed how the technique uses laser light to generate heat at the molecular scale, potentially allowing plastics to be broken down into their basic building blocks and reused.

Historically, wildfire research has focused on the western United States. However, changing climate conditions, increasing drought severity and dense development patterns are rapidly altering wildfire risk across the Eastern United States. Penn State hosted the Eastern Wildfire Forum in September to address the growing challenge of wildfire in the commonwealth and across the Eastern United States.

Pinshane Y. Huang, Racheff Faculty Scholar in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will give the talk “Building a new era of atom-by-atom materials characterization with electron ptychography” at 3:05 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, in 10 Sparks Building on the University Park campus.

Kara Fikrig, assistant professor of entomology at Penn State, will deliver the talk “Understanding the Distribution of Invasive Mosquitoes Across the Landscape — And the Human Role in Shaping It” at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 9, in 112 Walker Building at University Park and via Zoom.

Nuclear energy is a clean, low-carbon power source that can generate electricity 24 hours a day, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. New reactor technologies, such as molten salt reactors — which use high-temperature liquid salts instead of water as the primary coolant — have the potential to improve fuel utilization and support more efficient fuel recycling, among other possible benefits, according to a team led by scientists in Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has selected two faculty members in Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences to receive awards recognizing their research contributions: Jose D. Fuentes, professor of meteorology and atmospheric science, and Tushar Mittal, the Wilson Faculty Fellow of geosciences.

As part of our regular “We Are!” feature, we recognize 20 Penn Staters who have gone above and beyond what’s asked of them in their work at the University, including Amber DeCosmo.

Masaya volcano in Nicaragua sits within 13 miles of 2 million people and is a popular tourist destination due to its lava lake. Penn State researchers recently found evidence of two new magma sources under the active volcano, highlighting what they called the critical importance of understanding transitions in volcanic behavior and shallow magma processes, especially when they potentially pose hazards to local communities.

Zi-Kui Liu, the Corning Faculty Fellow in Materials Science and Engineering in the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, will receive the 2026 Materials Theory Award from the Materials Research Society. Liu will receive his award and present a lecture, “The Quest for Predictability — Thermodynamics as a Foundation Across Scales and Domains,” as part of the Materials Research Society’s annual meeting from Nov. 29 to Dec. 4 in Boston.

The Penn State's Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE) has welcomed four new faculty members whose research expands the breadth of expertise within its interdisciplinary community.