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Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences recognized exceptional students and faculty for their academic excellence, service and leadership during its annual Wilson Awards Celebration, held on March 30. The Wilson Awards are named in honor of Matthew and Anne Wilson, major benefactors of the college.

Chandima Hevapathiranage and Younes Shekarian are among forty-two graduate students recognized with university awards. 

Seth Blumsack, professor of energy policy and economics, is among the fall 2024 cohort of the Penn State Emerging Academic Leaders (PSEAL) program that have successfully completed their semester-long professional development experience.

Patrick Sarpong was among the student winners of Penn State’s 2025 Three Minute Thesis competition, hosted by the J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School, which took place on Saturday, March 29, at the Nittany Lion Inn.

Moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources like wind and solar will require better ways to store energy for use when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. A new study by researchers at Penn State found that taking advantage of natural geothermal heat in depleted oil and gas wells can improve the efficiency of one proposed energy storage solution: compressed-air energy storage (CAES).

Penn State ranked in 46 out of 52 subjects in the 2025 World University Rankings by Subject, released March 12 by London-based QS, one of the major three international organizations that annually rank academic institutions. The two of the 15 subject areas in which Penn State ranked in the top 50 worldwide are within the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering.

In 2012, Kelli Volkomer was a stay-at-home mom who had been raising her two children for nearly a decade. Today, Volkomer is a two-time Penn State graduate working in the energy industry and she said she’s still just as passionate about creating a better place for her children.

Franklin M. Orr, Jr., Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor Emeritus in the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at Stanford University, will give the 2025 G. Albert Shoemaker Lecture in Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State. His talk, “Transforming Global Energy Systems to Mitigate Climate Change,” will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, April 11, in 22 Deike Building at Penn State University Park and online via Zoom. A reception will precede the lecture at 3:00 p.m. in the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery. The event is free and open to the public.

Elham Rahimi, a graduate student in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, will receive the Raja V. and Geetha V. Ramani Graduate Students Award from the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME) at the society’s gala dinner during their annual conference, MINEXCHANGE, in Denver, Colorado on Sunday. February 23. 

Russell Johns is one of three faculty from Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).