Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences

06/01/2026

Team Weather World just earned a first-place finish at the Coaches vs Cancer Golf Tournament.

Big congrats to Jon Nese, Paul Markowski, Joel Kramer, Brent Martin, and Nicholas Ziccardi for their First-Place finish at the 29th Annual Coaches vs Cancer Golf Tournament at the Penn State Golf Courses.

In spite of the cool morning, the team got off to a hot start and finished with a blistering 51 (-21).

06/01/2026

The 2026 Ag Springboard Competition celebrated student innovation in agriculture and entrepreneurship.

Kumbu Connect, a digital platform aimed at strengthening connections within agricultural communities, earned top honors. Among the top winners is David Flores, a Penn State student majoring in materials science and engineering, demonstrating how diverse academic backgrounds contribute to agricultural innovation.

The competition highlights the creativity and drive of students developing solutions that support the future of food and agriculture. Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.

Penn State students had the opportunity to showcase their entrepreneurial aspirations at the 2026 Ag Springboard student business pitch contest, which took place last month in State College.

05/31/2026

Penn State researchers are part of a team uncovering how diamond can be engineered to become superconducting — a discovery with major implications for quantum technology.

Featured in Nanowerk, the study explains the physical principles behind superconductivity in boron‑doped diamond. Using facilities at Penn State’s Applied Research Lab, researchers synthesized high‑quality diamond thin films and identified hidden “granular” superconducting regions that help explain how electricity can flow with zero resistance.

Understanding this mechanism provides a roadmap for designing multifunctional quantum chips that integrate superconducting and semiconductor properties in a single material. The breakthrough strengthens Penn State’s leadership in quantum materials research and next‑generation device innovation.

05/30/2026

Big congratulations to Tara Staresinic on her summer internship with Unidata at UCAR.

Tara is spending the summer gaining hands‑on experience working with real‑world atmospheric and data tools — an exciting opportunity to apply what she’s learned in the classroom to national‑scale science infrastructure.

Internships like this give students the chance to collaborate with experts, build technical skills and see how research and data systems support the broader weather and climate community.

We can’t wait to see what Tara accomplishes this summer.

Breadcrumb Home News Welcome Summer Intern Tara Staresinic 2026 Summer Intern Tara Staresinic Tara Staresinic joined the NSF Unidata Program Center as a student summer intern on May 18, 2026. This fall, Tara will be a senior at Penn State University, majoring in Meteorology and Atmospheric Science a...

05/29/2026

What happens when you combine meteorology, journalism and storytelling?

For recent Penn State graduate Luke Snyder, it led to a hands-on audio documentary project with WPSU that helped him build professional experience while exploring the power of sound in storytelling.

Snyder graduated with degrees in meteorology and atmospheric science and journalism—an interdisciplinary combination that reflects how students can connect science communication with real-world media experience.

His project is a great example of Penn State students turning their interests into creative, career-building opportunities.

Students prepare for careers in broadcasting by creating a collection of “audio postcards” to air on WPSU-FM.

05/27/2026

Some of the earliest moving, sexually reproducing organisms ever discovered are coming into clearer focus thanks to newly described fossils.

Featured in Scientific American, the research highlights unusual ancient life forms that may represent a major evolutionary milestone — the emergence of mobility and sexual reproduction among early complex organisms more than 500 million years ago.

Our geosciences expert Kimberly Lau and her students were among the scientists to visit Northwest Canada to gather samples and use geochemistry to better understand the environment that allowed these deep-sea organisms to thrive.

The findings help scientists better understand how key biological traits developed and set the stage for the diversity of life that followed.

New trove of fossils reveals that ancestral animals likely emerged in the deep sea

05/24/2026

Ecologist and geologist Sarah Ivory is helping uncover a major ecological turning point in the Rwenzori Mountains.

Ivory and her collaborators documented the first major fire in 12,000 years in the high‑elevation African range, signaling a shift into a new environmental era. By analyzing sediment and environmental records, the team reconstructed long‑term patterns of fire and landscape change.

Ivory’s work highlights the sensitivity of mountain ecosystems to climate variability and underscores the broader implications of ongoing climate change.

Researchers have made a surprising discovery in sediment core samples from lakes in the East African Rwenzori Mountains: A 2012 wildfire that ravaged 16 square miles of the forest and alpine landscapes at more than 13,000 feet above sea level was unprecedented in at least the last 12,000 years.

05/19/2026

Penn State’s Sustainable Labs Program has concluded its fourth year, marking continued growth and impact across campus.

The program partners with research labs to reduce energy consumption, cut waste and implement more sustainable operational practices. By empowering lab teams with tools and strategies for efficiency, the initiative supports both environmental stewardship and research excellence.

As participation expands, the Sustainable Labs Program is helping embed sustainability into the daily work of scientific discovery at Penn State.

The Penn State Sustainable Labs Program continues to expand its reach across campuses while advancing efforts to reduce the environmental impact of research spaces. The 2025–26 cohort included 20 labs spanning multiple colleges, with seven labs recertifying after participating in the program’s i...