Suraiya Parvin and Naser Lessani, two doctoral candidates in Penn State’s Department of Geography, will deliver research talks as part of the department’s Graduate Student “Coffee Hour” series at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 7.

Jesse Reimink, associate professor in the Department of Geosciences, will give a public talk, “Towards a Chrono-Chemical Framework for Understanding Critical Mineral Concentration Mechanisms in Complex Pegmatite Systems,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 10.

Renewable energy sources like wind and solar generation now account for over 20% 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, said Chiara Lo Prete, an associate professor of energy economics in the John and Willie Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State.

The J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School encourages all graduate students, including those from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, to submit videos to the first round of the 2025-26 Three Minute Thesis competition until Dec. 5.

Naomi Bird, a third-year undergraduate student at Penn State with a dual major in geography and comparative literature, is completing research related to e-cigarette marketing to teens through Penn State’s Scales of Corporate Harm Lab, housed in the Department of Geography.

Some tech companies have already begun to harvest electricity from waste vibrations to power lights and recharge batteries using a class of piezoelectric ceramic materials, which emit electrical charges when stepped on or manipulated. Now, a team led by materials scientists at Penn State has expanded these early efforts of energy harvesting by improving the structure and chemistry of a piezoelectric material made of potassium sodium niobate.

A multidisciplinary team of Penn State students participated in the 2025 Society of Exploration Geophysicists' EVOLVE program, a mentor-guided, six-month virtual internship that uses commercial data to give students real-world experiences on energy exploration and carbon solutions. The team presented their results on a prospective gas reservoir at the SEG IMAGE Conference, held Aug. 25-28, in Houston, Texas.

Thelma Abu, assistant professor of environment and human interactions at the University of Connecticut, will deliver a talk titled “Invisible Wounds of a Warming World" at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 31, in 112 Walker Building and will also be accessible via Zoom. Abu will examine how climate extremes, particularly rising temperatures in semi-arid regions of Africa, affect mental health outcomes in low-resource settings. 

Geochemist Rens Verburg, senior vice president and technical fellow in geochemistry at the engineering and professional services firm WSP USA, will give a free talk, “The Critical Minerals Rush — Not So Fast,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 3.

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, the Science Policy Society graduate student organization at Penn State invites the campus community to explore these questions through a hands-on, scenario-based workshop titled "Conservation Policy in the Final Frontier: Strategic Simulation for Earth and Space Governance." The event is organized by Dani Buchheister, doctoral candidate in geosciences and astrobiology.