Read the latest news about research conducted by investigators in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Our faculty and students are continually advancing technology, creating solutions and expanding knowledge with new and innovative research.
Designing a new material for improved ultrasound
Development of a theoretical basis for ultrahigh piezoelectricity in ferroelectric materials led to a new material with twice the piezo response of any existing commercial ferroelectric ceramics, according to an international team of researchers from Penn State, China and Australia.
Researchers create tool to better geographic projections in atmospheric modeling
Open-source code developed by a Penn State graduate could improve weather forecasting and a range of other research endeavors that rely on pairing atmospheric models with satellite imagery.
Ferroelectrics expert keynote speaker at Taylor lecture
Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Purnendu Chatterjee Endowed Chair in Energy Technologies in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, will discuss “Electric Field Control of Magnetism” during the 2018 Nelson W. Taylor Lecture Series in Materials Science and Engineering, held on Thursday, April 5.
$2.5M grant funds real-time monitoring of underground carbon sequestration
Researchers from Penn State, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of Texas at Austin are partnering on a new $2.5-million project to illuminate what happens to carbon dioxide during underground sequestration.
Graduate student's hurricane research driven by desire to help home
It had been five days since Hurricane Maria made landfall with Puerto Rico, and Kelly Nunez Ocasio still hadn’t heard from her father. Ocasio grew up on the island and weathered powerful storms before. Now a graduate student at Penn State studying how hurricanes form, all she could do was wait.
Metal-organic compounds produces new class of glass
Lightning and volcanos both produce glass, and humans have been making glass from silicon dioxide since prehistory. Industrialization brought us boron-based glasses, polymer glasses and metallic glasses, but now an international team of researchers has developed a new family of glass based on metals and organic compounds that stacks up to the original silica in glass-forming ability.
Researchers embark on first-ever slow earthquake drilling mission
This March and April, an international team of researchers will install monitoring equipment inside an active fault zone off the coast of New Zealand, in the Ring of Fire, in the first-ever scientific drilling mission specifically designed to study slow earthquakes.
Spring is springing earlier in polar regions than across the rest of Earth
For every 10 degrees north from the equator you move, spring arrives about four days earlier than it did a decade ago, according to researchers from Penn State, U.C. Davis and the University of Minnesota Duluth. This northward increase in the rate of springtime advance is roughly three times greater than what previous studies indicated.
The fine-tuning of two-dimensional materials
A new understanding of why synthetic 2-D materials often perform orders of magnitude worse than predicted was reached by teams of researchers led by Penn State. They searched for ways to improve these materials' performance in future electronics, photonics, and memory storage applications.
NSF Day events offer resources, strategies for faculty researchers
NSF Day, on Feb. 28 at the Nittany Lion Inn, will feature several events aimed at providing resources and support for faculty interested in strengthening their research grant applications and forwarding their research careers.