Cornell researchers-turned-entrepreneurs are commercializing a technology with the potential to upend the rare-earth elements industry – with implications for sustainability and even national security.
Rare-earth elements are essential components in many electronics and renewable energy technologies, but currently most of them are extracted overseas in a costly and environmentally damaging process.
Alexa Schmitz, Ph.D. ’18, has developed a cleaner process for extracting these elements. Through research in the Barstow Lab in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Schmitz and doctoral student Sean Medin, M.S. ’22, engineered microbes to extract and purify rare-earth elements from minerals and recycled materials without the negative environmental consequences.
Alexa Schmitz, Ph.D. ’18, (right) co-founder and CEO of REEgen, talks with Brooke Pian, lab director at REEgen, at the Center for Life Science Ventures in Weill Hall.
Check out the full article from the Cornell Chronicle.
