NACE International and the Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP) has announced that NETL’s Margaret Ziomek-Moroz, Ph.D., has been selected to receive the 2021 NACE Fellows honor, becoming a member of the class of NACE Fellows for her sustained and widely recognized contributions to corrosion control. Ziomek-Moroz will receive her award during CORROSION 2021, NACE’s virtual conference and expo held April 19-30.

NETL amplifies the impacts of its nationally recognized technical competencies through collaboration with a variety of organizations, including university partnerships crucial to early-stage development of energy technologies that will lead the nation to a net-zero carbon emissions economy by 2050.

NETL Director Brian Anderson, Ph.D., and other NETL leaders will meet with faculty at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) on Tuesday, April 20, for discissions about key lab initiatives (KLIs) and their potential to intersect with research undertaken by the Pittsburgh university. “Partnerships between NETL and CMU have yielded a number of revolutionary energy-related discoveries. Therefore, it’s important for NETL to bring the faculty up to speed on our latest priorities and projects so we can explore continued collaboration with the incredible talent at CMU,” Anderson said.

As part of the ongoing POWERGEN+ series of presentations, NETL’s Tom Sarkus provided an in-depth look at how the power plant workforce will change in both the near- and long-term, as markets shift toward renewables, new technologies and operations emerge and workplace demographics and expectations evolve.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) has announced $6 million in Federal funding for cost-shared research and development projects under the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002405, Advanced Coal Waste Processing: Production of Coal-Enhanced Filaments or Resins for Advanced Manufacturing and Research and Development of Coal-Derived Graphite.

NETL leaders participated in the recent kickoff meeting of the Advanced Welding Workforce Initiative (AWWI) to discuss how the new program will provide workers with needed technical skills to fill good-paying jobs in the energy sector and emerging industries across Appalachia.

NETL together with the Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Pittsburgh Quantum Institute (PQI) to hold a joint workshop on April 16th as part of the PQI2021 Virtual Workshop on quantum information science, held April 13-16. As a free workshop, PQI2021 gave attendees the opportunity to explore panel discussions on quantum science applications in communications, defense and other topics, along with a series of speakers from national and international universities.

NETL’s Regional Workforce Initiative (RWFI), together with the Tri State Energy and Advanced Manufacturing (TEAM) Consortium and the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), highlighted the various elements at play to paint a picture of what the future of manufacturing and energy jobs holds during the “Predicting Future Regional and National Energy Workforce Needs” webinar.

NETL Director Brian Anderson, Ph.D., shared his leadership philosophies and best practices regarding the Lab’s technology transfer program in pursuit of net-zero carbon emissions during the annual meeting of the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC), held in a virtual format April 6-8.

NETL and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) to share geologic samples containing rare earth elements (REE) and critical minerals (CM). The arrangement will bolster REE and CM research for both organizations and help ensure vital components of clean energy technology will continue to be manufactured well into the future as the nation works to secure independence from offshore REE reliance.