Jeremy Weber, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Pittsburgh, will give the talk “Can environmental restoration help revitalize communities? Evidence from treating abandoned mine drainage in Pennsylvania” at noon on Friday, Sept. 18, in 157 Hosler Building at Penn State University Park.

Tyler Paladino, research geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), will give the talk “Preparing for volcanic eruption hazards using operational geodesy, machine learning, and probabilistic ash dispersal modeling tools,” at 2 p.m. on Friday, Sept 11, in 117 Earth and Engineering Sciences Building at Penn State University Park. Talk will also be available via Zoom.

Jingzhou Wang, a graduate student in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and Education at Penn State, will give the talk “Flood Risk and Housing Markets without Flood Insurance: Evidence from 1930s Pittsburgh,” at noon on Wednesday, Sept. 9, in 157 Hosler Building on Penn State's University Park campus.

Rebecca Bussard, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State, will give the talk “Mitigating Atmospheric Noise in InSAR Time-series Over Volcanic Targets Using a Convolutional Neural Network,” at 2 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 4, in 117 Earth and Engineering Sciences Building on the University Park campus and via Zoom.

Heather Stephens, professor of community and economic development and director of the Regional Research Institute at West Virgina University, will give the talk, “The Local Impact of Coal Mining Closures,” at noon on Wednesday, Sept. 2, in 157 Hosler Building on Penn State's University Park campus.

Pennsylvania ranks second in U.S. natural gas production, accounting for about one-fifth of U.S. output in 2024, and has one of the most extensive histories of energy extraction in the country. A team of researchers from Penn State is trying to better understand the environmental impacts of these sites — specifically, if fracking is increasing radium content in local drinking water.

Jon-Paul Maria, Dorothy Pate Enright Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State, has been named interim head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE), effective July 1. Maria will lead the department while John Mauro, current department head, begins service as the interim John Leone Dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS).

Alex Neill, an associate lecturer and doctoral researcher in applied social sciences at Newcastle University in Tyne, England, will give the talk “Towards Zero Waste Dining: Evaluating the Impact of Interventions on Sustainable Consumer Behavior” from noon to 1:15 p.m. on Tuesday, May 19, in 111 Borland Building on Penn State's University Park campus.

Metin Çakır, the Austin A. Dowell Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota, will give the talk, “California Drought, Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Prices, and Consumer Welfare,” at noon on Wednesday, April 29, in 157 Hosler Building at Penn State University Park. The event is part of a spring seminar series hosted by the Initiative for Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy (EEEPI). Talk is free and open to the public.

Christina McGranaghan, an assistant professor of applied economics at the University of Delaware, will give the talk, “Taking a Load Off: Experimental Evidence of Preferences for Control with an Application to Residential Electricity Demand,” at noon on Wednesday, April 22, in 157 Hosler Building on the Penn State University Park campus.