The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation (CMEI) today selected 16 universities, including New Mexico Tech, to receive a total of $16 million through the PROSPECT Planning Prize. The winning universities will advance nationwide efforts to grow the skilled workforce required to produce, process, recover, and recycle critical minerals in the United States while creating good-paying American jobs. 

“Receiving a PROSPECT Planning Prize is an exciting opportunity for us to strengthen the skilled workforce needed for the responsible domestic production, processing, recovery, and recycling of critical minerals,” said New Mexico Tech President Dr. Michael Jackson. “This effort reflects the collaborative expertise across multiple academic departments and I look forward to its integration with the critical minerals research conducted by faculty and staff across the campus, including our researchers in the Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (NMBGMR) and the Petroleum Recovery Research Center (PRRC).” 

The PROSPECT Planning Prize at New Mexico Tech is led by a distinguished team of faculty, including Drs. Sampurna Arya, the Principal Investigator; Mehrdad Razavi, Navid Mojtabai and Hassan Khaniani with the Department of Mineral Engineering; Paul Fuierer with the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering; Alex Rinehart with the Department of Earth and Environmental Science; and Mostafa Hassanalian in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

"We are excited to begin work on the Prospect Prize and appreciate this opportunity from the Department of Energy that highlights mining and metallurgy— two areas that our university was founded upon, which makes us an ideal participant in this important initiative," said Dr. Corey Leclerc, the Dean of the College of Engineering at New Mexico Tech. 

“America has abundant natural resources, but we need the skilled workforce to turn those resources into economic drivers that will grow our economy and create new jobs,” said Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson. “For decades, we have allowed our mining and critical minerals workforce to decline and our domestic supply chains of critical minerals to weaken. PROSPECT is about reversing that trend by challenging universities to rapidly grow the number of graduates ready to build and sustain the American critical minerals supply chains, from mines to materials.”

The winning universities demonstrated outstanding planning for innovative programs aimed at substantially increasing the number of graduates and other credentialed professionals prepared for careers in mining and related supply chain fields in the next two years. The United States, which faces a growing shortage of skilled mining and critical minerals professionals, will require an estimated 6,000 new mining engineers needed over the next decade.

Dr. Lique Coolen, the university’s Vice President for Research and Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs noted the Critical Minerals Workshop and Energy Initiatives Conference, to be held November 16-18 at the university, will highlight the immense depth and breadth of research and education in critical minerals at New Mexico Tech.

“I am extremely proud of our university’s enduring commitment to workforce development in mining and advancing groundbreaking critical minerals research,” said Dr. Coolen.

The selections are part of DOE’s broader $100 million Providing Opportunities for Specialized Education in Critical Technologies (PROSPECT) initiative.

Other selected universities include:

• Colorado School of Mines
• Columbia University
• Michigan Technological University
• Missouri University of Science and Technology
• Montana Technological University
• South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
• The Pennsylvania State University
• The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)
• The University of Utah
• University of Alaska Fairbanks
• University of Arizona
• University of Kentucky
• University of Nevada, Reno
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• West Virginia University

Learn more about this competition, including key dates and submission details, on the PROSPECT Prize page.

The PROSPECT Planning Prize is funded by CMEI and managed by the National Laboratory of the Rockies under the American-Made prize program.