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Luis Ayala, professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering and holder of the William A. Fustos Family Professor in Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State, has been honored as a distinguished member by the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

The fall 2022 Celebrating Women in Energy and Water Research seminar series continues on Thursday, Oct. 13, with two seminars by Susan Altman, deputy to the Energy and Homeland Security Portfolio at Sandia National Laboratories, a Department of Energy national lab. The free seminars are open to Penn State faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students. 

Penn State researchers have developed a model that demonstrates the value of flexible investment strategies when designing the many pathways needed to meet the emissions reduction goals outlined in the Paris Agreement.

Thermally regenerative ammonia batteries can produce electricity on demand from low-grade waste heat. A new process for creating these batteries improves their stability and affordability and may help address the country’s growing grid-scale energy storage problem, according to a team led by Penn State researchers.Thermally regenerative ammonia batteries can produce electricity on demand from low-grade waste heat. A new process for creating these batteries improves their stability and affordability and may help address the country’s growing grid-scale energy storage problem, according to a team led by Penn State researchers.

Yashar Mehmani, assistant professor in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, received a $629,000 Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to pursue an integrated modeling, experimental and educational plan to improve the basic understanding of failures in porous materials and develop a more accurate computational framework to predict them.

Student teams assumed the role of company leaders of a fictitious company as part of the Energy Crisis Leadership Challenge, a project designed to emulate the decision-making and stress of an unfolding crisis and force students to manage contradictory objectives from diverse stakeholders.

The Center for Energy Law and Policy will sponsor “Scaling Up Equitable Distributed Energy Workshop,” an expert panel of professors, former government representatives and industry leaders to explore potential solutions and legal and technical impediments to achieving scale and equity in the distributed, localized energy space. The virtual workshop and discussion will be held 1–3 p.m., Tuesday, May 10, via Zoom.

 The John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering (EME) will host its annual research showcase from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April. 27, in the HUB-Robeson Center on the Penn State University Park campus.

George Luxbacher, deputy associate director for mining at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) will give the 2022 G. Albert Shoemaker Lecture in Mineral Engineering at Penn State. His talk, “Mining Safety and Health Research for a Rapidly Changing Industry,” will be held at 3 p.m. on Friday, April 29, in the Freeman Auditorium at the Hub-Robeson Center and online via Zoom.

Renee Obringer, assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering, will give the seminar “Projecting Climate-Induced Shifts in Electricity Demand through Data Analytics,” as part of the spring 2022 Energy of the Future seminar series. Seminar will be held at 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in 157 Hosler Building and online via Zoom.