7 Teams Funded in 1st Year of Scialog: Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials
Top row: Nicholas Rolston, Loretta Roberson, Julian West, Helen Zha, Jaime Barros-Rios, Junsoo Kim. 2nd row: Grace Han, Lucas Bao, Agnes Thorarinsdottir, Isabel Barton, Jihye Kim. 3rd row: Shuwen Yue, Qi (Tony) Dong, Erika La Plante, Matthew Nava, Oscar Nordness, Julie Rorrer.
(NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect an additional team award made in December 2024.)
Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and The Kavli Foundation have made awards to seven cross-disciplinary teams of early career researchers in the first year of Scialog: Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials, a three-year initiative that aims to spark advances in the mining, design, manufacture, and disposal of materials needed to achieve a more sustainable and low-carbon energy system.
The 20 individual awards of $60,000 in direct costs will go to 17 scientists from colleges, universities, and research institutions in the United States and Canada.
"It’s always exciting to see the magic that happens when we launch a new Scialog,” said RCSA President & CEO Daniel Linzer. “Fellows come in not knowing who they’ll talk to or what they’ll talk about, and two days later they're close colleagues working together on new scientific ideas that could lead to groundbreaking research.”
Linzer noted that the theme of this Scialog aligns with the work of RCSA’s founder, Frederick Gardner Cottrell, who made significant contributions to sustainable mining practices in the early 1900s with his invention of the electrostatic precipitator, the first industrial-scale anti-pollution device. Not only did it remove noxious particles from smokestacks before they could pollute the surrounding land and water, but it served as an early recycling program, providing a way to recover valuable materials such as mercury that would otherwise be lost. Cottrell, who later served as director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, was posthumously inducted into the American Mining Hall of Fame for his lasting impact on the field.
“I’m sure Cottrell would have been tickled to see scientists from so many different disciplines collaborating on these important issues today and to see foundations working together to invest in basic scientific research to solve big societal problems like this,” Linzer said.
Scialog is short for “science + dialog.” Created in 2010 by RCSA, the Scialog format aims to accelerate breakthroughs by building a creative network of scientists that crosses disciplinary silos, and by stimulating intensive conversation around a scientific theme of global importance.
The inaugural conference, held September 4-7 in Tucson, Arizona, engaged more than 50 Fellows selected from multiple disciplines, approaches and methodologies in a series of conversations designed to build a networked community, discuss challenges and gaps in current knowledge, and form teams to propose high-risk, high-reward projects based on ideas they develop during the conference.
Keynote speaker Ikenna C. Nlebedim, Ames National Laboratory, emphasized a holistic and practical approach to the transition to a cleaner future with his talk, “Innovative, Simple and Non-Disruptive Solutions for Sustainable Critical Materials Challenges.”
Nlebedim stressed the importance of seeing challenges as potential opportunities. For instance, disposing of e-waste, while an environmental problem, presents an opportunity to recover valuable materials like rare earth elements.
“The thing you are thinking about might be very simple, but it may be exactly what somebody else needs to solve their problem,” he said. “Their problem is my solution.”
Nlebedim also stressed the importance of creating technologies that fit into existing waste collection and processing systems, rather than requiring significant changes to current infrastructure.
“Disruption is possible, but experience tells us it’s very difficult,” he said.
He also advised looking at co-creation of value from other materials in e-waste, rather than focusing solely on recovery of rare earth elements -- which fluctuate wildly in price -- to help improve the economic viability of recycling processes.
Jonathan Wilker, Purdue University, used his experiences working with both large companies and startups to bring bio-based adhesives to market in illustrating roadmaps for displacement of existing non-sustainable materials in his keynote talk, “Making Biomimetic Adhesives and Commercializing Sustainable Technologies.”
Wilker’s lab studies sea creatures such as mussels, barnacles, and oysters, which bond to rocks and to each other with chemistry not found in commercial glues, to make bio-based adhesives with bond strengths similar to commercial epoxies.
The science is the easy part, though.
“If you want to impact sustainability, we have to get stuff out of the lab,” he said. “We need the key components: a good technology and market demand. But we also need a company to make it, market it, figure out which sectors to go into, which partners to work with, and which partners to avoid.”
He encouraged Fellows to think about becoming entrepreneurs, even if it's not something they initially want to do, and suggested ways to explore that option.
Despite the challenges involved, Wilker believes startups are necessary because established companies are not moving quickly enough to adopt new sustainable technologies because they involve risk, expense, and potential competition with their own current products.
“Basically, it’s up to us to save the world,” he said.
During the conference, an expert group of scientists served as Facilitators to create a collaborative and inclusive environment and guide discussions. Along with Nlebedim and Wilker, they included: Kwame Awuah-Offei, Missouri University of Science and Technology; Will Dichtel, Northwestern University; Peter Dorhout, Iowa State University; Jennifer Dunn, Northwestern University; Andrea Hicks, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Amy Landis, Colorado School of Mines; and Eric Schelter, University of Pennsylvania.
One of Scialog’s distinctive features is its algorithmic matching of participants throughout the conference in small- and medium-sized breakout groups to maximize interaction among researchers who might never meet in their usual scientific silos, and with as many different people as possible. Participants are challenged to get to know each other and their research, and to envision what it would look like to collaborate, how they could leverage their different approaches and methods, and what novel problems they could tackle together.
On the final morning of the conference, teams that had coalesced during the previous three days made brief proposal pitches for a total of 36 projects they had envisioned together.
The following SM3 teams will receive 2024 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards:
Nicholas Rolston, Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University 2
Loretta Roberson, Bell Center, Marine Biological Laboratory 2
Julian West, Chemistry, Rice University 2
Seaweed for Critical Element Extraction and Transformation (Sea-CrEET)
Helen Zha, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 3
Loretta Roberson, Bell Center, Marine Biological Laboratory 3
Jaime Barros-Rios, Plant Science and Technology, University of Missouri 1
Engineering Plants and Algae as Dye-Free Alternatives to Fossil-Based Textiles
Junsoo Kim, Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University 1
Grace Han, Chemistry, Brandeis University 1
Lucas Bao, Chemistry, Boston College 1
Synergistic Photomechanical Depolymerization
Nicholas Rolston, Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University 2
Agnes Thorarinsdottir, Chemistry, University of Rochester 2
Isabel Barton, Mining & Geological Engineering, University of Arizona 2
Electrocatalyst Formation from Extracted Critical Trace Elements in Copper Ores (EFFECT ECO)
Jihye Kim, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Colorado School of Mines 2
Shuwen Yue, Chemical Engineering, Cornell University 2
Qi (Tony) Dong, Chemistry, Purdue University 2
AI/ML-assisted Separation and Programmable Electrodeposition of Ni and Co
Erika La Plante, Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Davis 2
Matthew Nava, Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles 1
Oscar Nordness, Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University 1
Water-Free Silicate Activation for Valuable Metal Extraction
Helen Zha, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1
Julie Rorrer, Chemical Engineering, University of Washington 1
Co-Developing Advanced Catalysts and Engineered Microbes to Upcycle Mixed, Low-Value Plastic Waste into High-Value Recombinant Products
Funded by RCSA 1
Funded by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation 2
Funded by The Kavli Foundation 3
