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EMSL Community Science Campaign Meeting: Critical Minerals and Materials
November 4 - 5, 2025

EMSL Community Science Campaign Meeting: Critical Minerals and Materials

November 4 - 5, 2025

Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Richland, WA (on the campus of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) and online

The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) is holding a free two-day community science campaign meeting to identify and prioritize critical minerals and materials (CMM) research needs aligned to EMSL goals. Input from meeting participants will inform the research focus of future CMM community science campaigns.

Researchers from academia, national laboratories, and industry, who are experts in the fields of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and molecular microbiology focused on biomining, phytomining, metalloproteins, metal-binding metabolomics, and critical mineral-relevant multi-omics, are encouraged to attend. 

Meeting goals
  • Identify and prioritize knowledge gaps, research needs, and barriers, to understanding fundamental geochemical, microbial, and pore-scale transport processes that control solubilization, mobilization, and transformation of critical minerals and materials in sediments and unconventional source materials, including soils, mine tailings, mine-drainage materials, and bioreactors.
  • Generate focused science questions to shape EMSL’s community science campaigns.
Community science campaigns

EMSL supports science at scale to accelerate fundamental breakthroughs that cannot be achieved by individual researchers and teams. The community science campaigns mobilize the collective strength of the research community, and leverage our cutting-edge capabilities, to generate large-scale structured data that supports better process understanding and physics- and AI-based analysis and modeling. 

Mission alignment

This meeting supports the Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program’s research priority to advance bioinspired approaches for critical mineral and material extraction and separation from low-grade ores and unconventional source materials.

BER supports transformative science and scientific user facilities to achieve a predictive understanding of complex biological, earth, and environmental systems for energy and infrastructure security, independence, and prosperity.

Important Registration Dates

  • Registration opens: August 25
  • Registration closes: October 1

Space is limited. Registration does not guarantee approval to attend. 

Attendees are responsible for all costs incurred. There is no funding available through EMSL to participate.

NOVEMBER 4, 2025 - DAY 1

Morning Session  
Open to All

8:00 AM PSTWelcome and charge to meeting (20 min.)
8:20 AM PST

Keynote speaker #1 (30 min. / 10 min. Q&A)

Heileen Hsu-Kim

  • Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Duke University
  • Presentation: “Resourcing Critical Minerals from Waste Streams: Lessons Learned from Extracting Rare Earths from Acid Mine Drainage”
9:00 AM PST

Keynote speaker #2 (30 min. / 10 min. Q&A)

Rene Boiteau

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota
  • Presentation: “Mining Environmental Microbiomes for Selective Metallophores”
9:40 AM PSTBreak (10 min.)
9:50 AM PST

Keynote speaker #3 (30 min. / 10 min. Q&A)

Scott Angle

  • Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Florida
  • Presentation: “Phytomining: Past, Present, Future, and Gaps”
10:30 AM PSTRoundtable discussion 
11:15 AM PSTBreak for lunch (30 min.)

Afternoon Session  
Virtual Invited Attendees Only

11:45 AM PST

Breakout session #1 (1 hour 15 min.)

  • Unconventional Critical: Challenges to Breakthrough
  • Rhizo Critical: Challenges to Breakthrough
  • Microbial Biomolecules: Scientific Discovery Frontiers
1:00 PM PSTTake-home points from breakout session #1 by group (20 min.)
1:20 PM PSTBreak (10 min.)
1:30 PM PST

Breakout session #2 (1 hour 15 min.)

  • Unconventional Critical: Approaches (includes EMSL flash talks)
  • Rhizo Critical: Approaches (includes EMSL flash talks)
  • Microbial Biomolecules: Building the Multi-PI Science Campaign
2:45 PM PSTTake-home points from breakout session #2 by group (15 min.)
3:00 PM PSTAdjourn day #1

 

NOVEMBER 5, 2025 - DAY 2

All-Day Session  
Virtual Invited Attendees Only

8:00 AM PSTWelcome and day #1 recap (15 min.)
8:15 AM PST

Breakout session #3 (1 hour 15 min.)

  • Unconventional Critical: Science-to-site Integration
  • Rhizo Critical: Science-to-site Integration
  • Microbial Biomolecules: Measurement, Methodology, and Connecting Scales
9:30 AM PSTTake-home points from breakout session #3 by group (20 min.)
9:50 AM PSTBreak (15 min.)
10:05 AM PST

Breakout session #4 (1 hour 15 min.)

  • Unconventional Critical: "Straw Person" Campaign Framework
  • Rhizo Critical: "Straw Person" Campaign Framework
  • Microbial Biomolecules: Priority Science, First Science, User Engagement
11:20 AM PSTGroup discussion for breakout session #4 (20 min.)
11:40 AM PSTBreak for lunch (45 min.)
12:25 PM PST

Breakout session #5 (1 hour 15 min.)

  • Unconventional Critical: Priority Science and Next Steps
  • Rhizo Critical: Priority Science and Next Steps
  • Microbial Biomolecules: Campaign Framework
1:40 PM PSTWrap-up by group (40 min.)
2:20 PM PSTClosing remarks – all participants (10 min.)
2:30 PM PSTAdjourn