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Organizing Committee Biographies
Roderick G. Eggert is professor and director of the Division of Economics and Business at the Colorado School of Mines, where he has taught since 1986. He was editor of Resources Policy, an international journal of mineral economics and policy, from 1989 to 2006. Previously he taught at The Pennsylvania State University and held research appointments at Resources for the Future (Washington, DC) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria). He has a B.A. in earth sciences from Dartmouth College, an M.S. in geochemistry and mineralogy from The Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. in mineral economics from Penn State. His research and teaching have focused on various aspects of mineral economics and public policy, including the economics of mineral exploration, mineral demand, mining and the environment, microeconomics of mineral markets, and most recently mining and sustainable development. He served for two terms on the Committee on Earth Resources of the National Research Council (NRC). He served as chair of the NRC Committee on Critical Mineral Impacts on the U.S. Economy, which authored the 2008 report Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy.
Patricia A. Thiel is the Division Director for Science and Technology at Ames Laboratory and a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Iowa State University (ISU), where she is active in research, teaching, and administration. In research, she is known for her work in three main areas: nanostructure evolution on surfaces, surface properties and structures of quasicrystals (a complex type of metallic alloy), and the chemistry of water adsorbed on metal surfaces. Thiel is an enthusiastic teacher of physical chemistry. She has held several administrative posts at ISU, including chair of her department. Thiel received her B.A. in chemistry at Macalester College, and her Ph.D. in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in 1981. After postdoctoral work at the University of Munich as a von Humboldt Fellow, she joined the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, then moved to ISU in 1983. In her early academic career there, Thiel was recognized with awards from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and by a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award. Later, she was elected a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society, the American Physical Society, and the Institute of Physics.
Levi T. Thompson is the Richard Balzhiser Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan. Other honors and awards include the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Union Carbide Innovation Recognition Award, the Dow Chemical Good Teaching Award, the College of Engineering Service Excellence Award, and the Harold Johnson Diversity Award. He is co-founder, with his wife Maria, of T/J Technologies, a developer of nanomaterials for advanced batteries and fuel cells. He is also Consulting Editor for the AIChE Journal, and a member of the External Advisory Committee for the Center of Advanced Materials for Purification of Water with Systems (NSF Science and Technology Center at the University of Illinois) and AIChE Chemical Engineering Technology Operating Council. Professor Thompson earned his B.ChE. from the University of Delaware, and M.S.E. degrees in chemical engineering and nuclear engineering, and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan. Research in Professor Thompson’s group focuses primarily on defining relationships between the structure, composition, and function of nanostructured catalytic and electrochemical materials. In addition, he has distinguished himself in the use of micromachining and self-assembly methods to fabricate microreactor, hydrogen production, and micro-fuel cell systems. Professor Thompson leads a large
multidisciplinary team developing compact devices to convert gasoline and natural resources into hydrogen. Recently, he was appointed founding Director of the Hydrogen Energy Technology Laboratory.