News

Penn State University Libraries will celebrate GIS Day on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at an event aimed to the broad audience of the Penn State community — students, staff, faculty and community members — with interests in learning about how geospatial information is being used on campus and beyond.

A student in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and the Schreyer Honors College had the opportunity to spend her summer conducting independent research at a local dig site that she discovered. Watch video.

While exploring for fossils with her father in the State College area in 2014, Penn State geobiology major Anna Whitaker discovered a fossil of a prehistoric starfish. The Whitakers brought the excavated fossil to the University to be analyzed. Mark Patzkowsky, professor of geosciences, identified the starfish as an ophiuroid, labelling it the first of its kind to be discovered in Centre County.

Rising sea levels caused by a warming climate threaten greater future storm damage to New York City, but the paths of stronger future storms may shift offshore, changing the coastal risk for the city, according to a team of climate scientists.

Barry Voight, professor emeritus of geology and geological engineering, Penn State, is among 84 new members and 22 foreign associates elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Desirable properties including increased electrical conductivity, improved mechanical properties, or magnetism for memory storage or information processing may be possible because of a theoretical method to control grain boundaries in two-dimensional materials, according to Penn State materials scientists.

 Geography graduate student Megan Baumann has been spending the last few summers in Nicaragua learning from farmers how they manage their land and crops. As the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, she hopes to continue her research in this area.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry highlighted the national importance of a new Penn State–industry collaboration during a recent visit to a Jeddo Coal Company mine in Ebervale, Pennsylvania. Along with Rep. Lou Barletta, of Pennsylvania's 11th district, Perry spoke at a press conference about the collaboration, which aims to extract rare resources from coal. The project is funded by the Department of Energy through the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).

Mauro is the co-inventor of three iterations of Corning’s Gorilla Glass, a thin, durable, touch sensitive, cover glass that has been used in billions of cellphones, tablets and touch-screen devices worldwide. Mauro was one of multiple developers of an early iteration of Gorilla Glass, and dozens of other patented products, during his 18-year career at Corning before shifting this year to academia.

Xiaoxing Wang, an associate research professor in Penn State’s Earth and Mineral Sciences Energy Institute, received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award at the 15th International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilization, held July 17-21 in Shanghai, China.