Conference: North American Workshop on Critical Mineral Research, Development and Education, August 13-14, 2025, Austin, Texas, USA

2507652 (Locmelis). The United States considers 50 mineral commodities as ‘critical minerals’ that are essential to the national economy and safety. The United States relies heavily on imports for 43 out of the 50 critical minerals, which means strengthening domestic supply chains for these minerals is a pressing need.

This requires a multidisciplinary approach including mineral exploration, material flow analysis, mining and mineral processing practices, metallurgy, policy making, supply chain economics, sustainability, reclamation, and workforce development. This award provides partial support for the North American Workshop on Critical Mineral Research, Development and Education to be held August 13-14, 2025 at the University of Texas at Austin.

Participants will include stakeholders from academia, the private sector and government agencies. They will discuss conventional and unconventional resources of critical minerals from multidisciplinary perspectives, including mineral exploration, resource and reserve evaluation, mineral processing and recycling, policy making, supply chain economics, workforce development, and artificial intelligence and machine learning in critical mineral research and development.

International leaders will give keynote presentations on the current state of knowledge, highlighting potential strategies to address critical mineral research, development, and education. Presentations by participants, poster sessions, and breakout sessions will facilitate discussions of additional concepts and perspectives. It is anticipated that the workshop will serve as a long-term platform for the budding critical mineral community in the USA and will nurture relationships among participants from academia, government agencies and the private sector – thus facilitating multi-disciplinary collaborations with the goal of strengthening U.S. critical mineral supply chains.

The workshop will provide a truly multidisciplinary platform to discuss critical mineral research, development and education from different perspectives. Sessions will be structured around pressing research needs in several areas, including mineral resources, mineral processing and recycling technologies, policy making, supply chain economics, and pathways towards growing the U.S. critical mineral workforce.

The workshop committee will prepare a comprehensive multidisciplinary report that that will summarize the workshop discussions and can be used to inform decision-making in pursuit of strengthening U.S. critical mineral supply chains. The hybrid in-person/virtual workshop will nurture the budding national critical mineral community by providing a multidisciplinary discussion platform for participants from academia, the private sector, and government agencies.

Travel grants, primarily for students and early-career researchers, will help build a community that spans generations and ensure the meeting’s lasting impact. The development of a healthy and active critical mineral community is pivotal to the national safety and economy because the United States remains import-reliant for most commodities on the critical minerals list.

The workshop’s breakout sessions are designed to foster networking between stakeholders from a wide spectrum of disciplines who otherwise rarely interact. To ensure an impact beyond the dates of the workshop, the workshop activities will be used to help start research and educational collaborations.

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.