Director’s Corner

by Brian Anderson, Ph.D.

NETL researchers have received three Secretary’s Honor Awards for advancing technologies that have made significant impacts in meeting the priorities of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). 

Those at NETL who received this prestigious recognition have established themselves as leaders in their respective fields and have made breakthrough discoveries or developed new tools to clean our water and air, lower the environmental footprint of energy production, and create new jobs and industries.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm recognized the following at NETL for going above and beyond in fulfilling DOE’s mission and serving the nation:

• Christina Lopano, Ph.D., research physical scientist, received the Secretary of Energy’s Excellence Award for her innovative research and development (R&D) to recover rare earth elements and critical minerals from coal waste streams. This research is advancing efforts to end reliance on offshore suppliers and to establish a reliable domestic source of these materials, which are needed to manufacture valuable consumer products as well as medical equipment, energy components and defense systems.
• NETL’s Energy Data eXchange (EDX) Development and Operations Team received the Secretary of Energy’s Achievement Award. Developed and maintained by NETL, EDX is a data laboratory built to find, connect, curate, use and re-use data to advance fossil energy and environmental R&D. By providing a platform from which data from more than 20,000 research projects can be accessed, EDX has helped streamline R&D projects that will address some of the greatest energy, environmental and technological challenges of the 21st century.
• The NETL Multi-Functional Sorbent Technology (MUST) Team also received the Secretary of Energy’s Achievement Award for developing a suite of sorbents that offers a practical, affordable and green approach to remove metals that contaminate water supplies across America. NETL partners in the development of MUST products include Somerset International, which will use MUST to treat acid mine discharges, and Dow Chemical, whose plans call for using MUST in pharmaceutical and electronic production processes.

Secretary’s Honor Awards are among the highest department honors a federal employee or contractor can receive. I congratulate our outstanding researchers on their impressive accomplishments and well-deserved recognition.