Mining and explosives engineering faculty members, through the Thomas J. O’Keefe Center for Critical Minerals, are developing technology and tools that facilitate sustainable supply of strategic minerals for the United States. 

Our research on sustainable minerals and resources includes developing new processes to recover critical minerals as byproducts from existing processes and new sources, identifying new sources of critical minerals within the United States, assessing life-cycle-based criticality of existing and new processes for critical mineral recovery, and assessing sustainability and environmental mitigation of potential hazards of existing and new processes.