Our Team
We are an interdisciplinary research and education ecosystem to accelerate a secure, resilient critical mineral supply.
Leadership
Leanne Gilbertson
Co-Director
Dr. Gilbertson’s research group aims to integrate molecular design and systems-level analysis to advance minimally impactful, high performing solutions that address today’s most pressing challenges. Specific projects related to critical minerals include:
- developing non-metal photocatalysts and photocatalytic processes for recovering critical minerals from waste streams and
- quantifying system tradeoffs to inform net benefit use cases of critical minerals (e.g., different technologies; reuse and recovery options; non-CM material alternatives).
Avner Vengosh
Co-Director
Dr. Vengosh’s research group aims to develop new methods to discover critical minerals in conventional and unconventional sources, evaluate the sustainability of critical minerals mining, reconstruct the water footprint of critical materials life cycle and utilization in electric vehicle, and investigate the potential environmental impact, in particular water quality of critical minerals mining. Specific projects related to critical minerals include:
- the origin of lithium and geochemistry of hypersaline lithium-rich brines in the Lithium Triangle of South America,
- water quality impacts from the legacy of lithium mining in North Carolina,
- the potential water quality Impacts of mining critical raw materials ores, and
- the water consumption footprint of electric vehicles in the United States.
Ginger Sigmon
Hub Manager
Ginger Sigmon, PhD is the Director of Research Development and Administration for the Nicholas School of the Environment. Specific projects related the Duke Critical Minerals Hub include:
- keeping the Hub moving forward towards its goals,
- aeeking funding opportunities for the Hub and its members, and
- working as the glue to keep all associated with the Hub engaged.
Heileen Hsu-Kim
Research Lead
Heileen (Helen) Hsu-Kim is a Professor of Environmental Engineering at Duke University. She is an aquatic geochemist whose research focuses on trace metals and metalloids in the environment. As part of her current research activities, Dr. Hsu-Kim studies geological waste streams such as coal mine drainage and coal combustion residuals as a resource for rare earth elements and other critical metals. Her work aims to characterize the chemical forms of critical metals and host mineral phases as they inform waste-to-resource applications. Dr. Hsu-Kim’s group also studies hydrometallurgical methods and liquid membrane separations for extracting rare earths from waste residuals.
Scholars at Duke | Research Website
Erika Weinthal
Education Lead
Erika Weinthal is the John O. Blackburn Distinguished Professor of Environmental Policy at Duke University. She is Chair of the Environmental Social Systems Division in the Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the Bass Society of Fellows. She was a prior Chair of Duke’s Academic Council. Weinthal specializes in global environmental politics, water cooperation and conflict, environmental security and peacebuilding, the political economy of resource extraction, and critical minerals governance.
Sharlini Sankaran
External Engagement Lead
Sharlini Sankaran, Ph.D., is Director of External Partnerships at the Duke Office for External Partnerships (OEP). She facilitates and establishes external partnerships between Duke researchers and public and private sector organizations in order to accelerate translation and adoption of research to positively impact society. Sankaran has two decades’ leadership experience at the intersection of academic-government-industry partnerships, technology-based innovation, and economic development.
Faculty
Olivier Delaire
The Delaire Lab investigates advanced energy materials, focusing on atomistic mechanisms boosting performance. A current focus is on sodium-based materials for next-generation solid-state batteries, and investigating the influence of various critical minerals on the performance of thermoelectric energy conversion and materials for novel computing applications. Our research combines advanced experiments at the Department of Energy’s National Labs, such as neutron scattering and synchrotron x-ray scattering, as well as high-performance computer simulations and machine learning methods development.
Michela Geri
Michela Geri is an Assistant Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, with courtesy appointment in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Geri’s research leverages synergies between rheology/mechanics and transport phenomena to study the multi-scale and multi-physics behavior of particulate systems. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how physicochemical and microstructural properties of particles, droplets or bubbles affect the macroscopic behavior of dispersions, emulsions and foams. Current projects in her lab focus on oxide particle stabilized emulsions with tunable particle selectivity and waste upcycling for sustainable structural materials.
Jie Liu
Jie Liu, George Barth Geller Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, is interested in research related to energy conversion and storage. His lab develops chemical processes that can reduce the use of critical minerals in these energy related applications. Liu Lab is also interested in developing electrochemistry-related recycling processes to recover critical minerals from waste, including but not limited to dead batteries.
David Mitzi
David Mitzi is the Simon Family Distinguished Professor at Duke University, with appointments to the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Chemistry. His group’s research focuses on the development of materials for sustainable energy conversion, storage, and use. Current areas of interest include crystal structure-property relationships in hybrid organic-inorganic materials (e.g., perovskites) and metal chalcogenides, as well as materials processing approaches, for prospective use in photovoltaic, photoelectrochemical, LED, thermoelectric, and spintronic devices.
Clara Park
Clara Park is a Senior Research Scientist of Political Science at Duke University. Dr. Park studies business and politics in international relations, including international trade, finance, and clean energy transition. Park’s current research in critical minerals examines the economic and security implications of the global value chain of critical minerals in a book project, the Geopolitics of the Critical Minerals Supply Chain.
Dalia Patiño-Echeverri
Dalia Patiño-Echeverri heads the research group GRACE (A Grid that is Risk Aware for Clean Electricity), which explores, assesses, and proposes technological, policy, and market approaches to pursue environmental sustainability, affordability, reliability, and resiliency in the energy sector. Through realistic simulations of U.S. electric power systems, the lab can estimate the impacts of deploying new energy assets on the grid, and in this way inform environmental life-cycle assessments of Transmission lines, Renewable Energy, Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Data Centers, and other emerging technologies.
Dan Richter
Dan Richter, T.S. Coile Professor of Soils, teaches and studies about how the diversity of soils form on Earth, under natural conditions, during reforestation, and in cities — from the bedrock to surface soils. Richter has promoted the concept that Earth’s full weathering zone (the critical zone) is in fact the soil system, and thus that critical minerals ride what he calls “the soil-particle conveyor” to leave signatures of their presence in bedrock in the minerals of surface soils. Richter is currently studying soil and regolith formed from Li-rich pegmatites in the Carolina Piedmont.
Strategic Advisors
Katie Lipe
Assistant Vice President, State Relations
Jonathan Owens
Director of Business Development and Industry Partnerships
