EMRG is presenting five oral and poster presentations and receiving two awards at the 2025 TMS Annual Meeting.  The awards are for Best Poster in the Magnesium 2024 Symposium, and the 2025 Extraction and Processing Division Distinguished Lecture (WPI press release).  Presentations will cover recycling of rare earth magnets and magnesium metal, carbon fuel cells, and the future of energy-intensive industry in the emerging electrical grid.

EMRG Principal Investigator Adam Powell was one of 21 WPI faculty members awarded tenure in March 2025.

In December 2024, Emmanuel Offei Opoku defended his M.S. Thesis entitled, "Liquid Metal Leaching for Rare Earth Permanent Magnets Recycling and G-METS Distillation."  Emmanuel's work showed that demagnetizing rare earth magnets can passivate their coatings, resulting in far less contamination by coating materials, and higher quality metal product.

The WPI 2023-2024 Sustainability Report published in November 2024, includes a big section on the Energy Metals Research Group.  The PDF report describes the group's mission and projects (p. 33), including participation in the iron flow electrolysis project (p. 30).

Three EMRG MQP projects are among the seven teams in the WPI I-Corps Site Program for 2024-2025.  This program guides teams of aspiring entrepreneurs through the customer discovery process to learn about the market needs associated with their work.  This in turn helps to focus research around products and services which will most likely gain customer traction and achieve their goals of impact in the marketplace.

In August 2024, Amy Telgerafchi successfully defended her Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Analytical and Numerical Modeling of Gravity Multi Effects Thermal System (G-METS) Distillation for Enhanced Metal Recycling and Production".  This project dealt with understanding vapor and liquid flow, heat and mass transfer in this complex distillation process.  Congratulations Amy!

A team of four WPI fourth-year undergraduates won the Best Paper award for their work on a surgical robot design at the 29th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (AROB) in January 2024 in Beppu, Japan.  The project, conducted at the Kyoto University of Advanced Science MQP Project Center, was advised by Profs. Sajin Nisar (KUAS), Adam Powell, Yihao Zheng, and Sharon Johnson (WPI). See the KUAS, and WPI announcements.

The Energy Metals Research Group gave five presentations at the TMS Annual Meeting on metal distillation, magnet recycling, and magnesium production from seawater, and helped to organize a Symposium honoring Uday Pal at Boston University.

A new open-access article in Frontiers in Chemistry describes our magnesium primary production process.

Dr. Aditya Moudgal, Dr. Chinenye Chinwego, Dr. Mahya Shahabi and Dr. Qingli Ding are the first four to complete the PhD degree in the Energy Metals Research Group.  Congratulations to all of you!   Links to their Doctoral Theses are posted on the Research page.

Eight presentations at the TMS Annual Meeting described results of projects in EMRG and with collaborating research groups.

Gabriel Espinosa is one of two winners of the campus-wide Two Towers award for 2023.  He spent two years working with EMRG, and in that time participated in the magnesium distillation project, culminating a presentation at the TMS Annual Meeting.

Soon after publication of our net-zero aerospace fuel study with Jagan Jayachandran, a WPI press release led to stories in Boston Business Journal, Aviation Week, Biofuels Digest, Science Daily, Worcester Business Journal, Advanced Biofuels USA, Mirage News, Innovation Origins, Innovation News Network, ENGG talks, Design Products & Applications, GAA Magazine and Verve Times

The presentation "High Temperature Electrochemistry for Climate Mitigation" was selected for a Best Paper Award by the MIT A+B Conference organizers.  This and other awardee papers will be published in a special issue of the journal Applied Energy.

12 group members just completed degrees or research experiences in EMRG.  Thanks for all of your great work, best wishes as you move on to new opportunities!  (Photo from TMS, forgot to take one at the graduation celebration.)

WPI announced it has joined Second Nature, a diverse array of higher education institutions to act on bold climate commitments, and Principles for Responsible Investment, the world’s leading proponent of responsible investment

Fifteen presentations at the TMS Annual Meeting by EMRG members and project collaborators described results of group projects.

Stephen Jacek completed his MS degree in Materials Science and Engineering when he successfully defended his thesis on the Direct Carbon Fuel Cell project on December 10, 2021.

Congratulations Mohammad Asadikiya, former EMRG postdoc and President of SilarTek LLC, for winning a National Science Foundation SBIR Phase I grant!  This will fund continued development and commercialization of the group's technology for solar silicon production.  This is the first startup launched from EMRG, and the first funding for that first startup!

Group member Christian Faria has won first prize in the WPI Graduate Research Innovation Exchange (GRIE) Poster Competition, Chemical & Materials Engineering category, for Spring 2021.  Faria is completing his MS degree in Materials Science and Engineering, working on the Direct Carbon Fuel Cell project, and defended his MS thesis on this topic on April 29 2021.

The Energy Metals Research Group is working on three new funded R&D projects: molten salt properties for nuclear reactors, rare earth recycling for US defense needs, and semi-continuous calciothermal reduction of rare earths.

Ten presentations at the TMS Annual Meeting described results of Energy Metals Research Group projects.