Conference: Resilient Supply of Critical Minerals, 2025, Rolla, MO

Missouri University Of Science And Technology, Rolla MO

Investigators

Abstract

2521203 (Awuah-Offei). The US has a critical minerals and materials problem. The decay of American mining, processing, and refining capacity has led to supply chain disruption risks for many minerals and materials needed for national defense and economic development. The US currently imports $102B worth of processed mineral materials (mostly critical minerals) that ultimately support $3.62 trillion in economic activity. The US heavily relies on imports of 38 of the 50 critical minerals, including 26 that China effectively monopolizes. Addressing this challenge requires government, academia, and private industry to work collaboratively to establish the right policy framework, conduct research and development, build mines and processing facilities (including recycling facilities), train and develop a workforce, and other initiatives to ensure resilient supply of critical minerals to support the nation. Missouri University of Science & Technology (Missouri S&T) will convene a hybrid in-person/virtual workshop on August 6–7, 2025 at Missouri S&T in Rolla, MO. The theme for the workshop is “Empowering a Vibrant Workforce: Leveraging Critical Minerals Research to Drive Innovation and Growth.” The workshop will start with a keynote session on workforce development that sets the tone for the entire workshop. Following the keynote session will be a panel discussion on educational programs to prepare the workforce for the critical minerals sector. The workshop will then have three sessions on exploration and engineering, processing, and recycling, and policy. All these sections will have discussions on workforce, which will be the main theme for the entire 2025 workshop. All sessions will have facilitated breakout sessions that allow participants to collaboratively generate ideas to address the critical minerals and materials challenges. The combination of carefully selected keynotes to initiate the discussion and the facilitated breakout sessions promote vibrant interactions that that are anticipated to generate promising strategies. Supply of critical minerals and materials is recognized as a fundamental challenge by governments and industry. However, the nature of the problem requires cross-disciplinary discussions and theoretical framing to pose the right questions, which can lead to productive research directions. This challenge requires science-based policy in addition to fundamental and use-inspired research to overcome technical hurdles. This workshop will continue to bring together a wide-spectrum of stakeholders to discuss fundamental gaps and provide a roadmap to convergent research themes for researchers to address. The workshop will tackle issues related to workforce development and policies needed to increase participation in the critical minerals and materials field. This workshop addresses an issue of tremendous national and international importance. The geopolitical ramifications of critical minerals and materials supply chains cannot be overstated. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.