CMI Outreach 2026

CMI plans education and outreach activities throughout the year, ranging from youth to adult, with an emphasis on workforce development.

January-February-March

• National Engineers Week, February 23-27, 2026:

  • CMI at Idaho National Laboratory offered a Community STEM outreach event at Jefferson Elementary. Ruby Nguyen joined the INL’s K-12 program to organize a STEM night at Jefferson Elementary School in Idaho as a celebration for the school’s second place in an e-waste collection contest. Nguyen led the hands-on demonstration using the CMI Critical Materials Toolkit, including a new activity for material separation using bird seed, and a magnet strength activities, one using copper tube and one creating an icosahedron structure. This event introduced foundational concepts in critical materials, recycling, and engineering to more than 300 students through interactive activities. 

    

  • CMI at Colorado School of Mines introduced a new activity for the CMI toolkit and planned Engineering Day on February 25, 2026, with Colorado School of Mines and the National Laboratory of the Rockies. They welcomed 111 high school and middle school students from the local area to celebrate National Engineering Week. Middle and high school students engaged in three engineering challenges including a cookie mining activity that introduces resource extraction. 

    

  • CMI at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used the CMI Education and Outreach Toolkit for the STEM night at Mill Creek School in Knoxville, Tennessee, on February 26. This reached 1,000 students aged 5-15 years old, who enjoyed the magnet activities including comparing speed of different types of magnets falling through copper tubes.
  • CMI at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used the CMI Education and Outreach Toolkit for the Woodland Elementary fourth grade on February 27. This reached 32 students aged 9-10, who enjoyed magnets, ore samples and phosphor glow paper.
• The 2026 CMI Winter Meeting featured a “Life after CMI” panel discussion moderated by Celeste Stroup, CMI Education and Workforce Development Program Manager at Colorado School of Mines (shown right). The panelists (shown from left):
  • Arturo Hirata-Miyasaki, USA Rare Earth, former CMI graduate student at Colorado School of Mines
  • Kinjal Gandha, Principal Mineral, former CMI postdoc at Ames National Laboratory
  • Max Brown, Colorado School of Mines, former CMI graduate student at Colorado School of Mines

• The Critical Materials Innovation Hub selected 10 early and mid-career researchers for the seventh cohort of the CMI Leadership Academy, which met virtually in January and in-person at the CMI Winter Meeting in February. During the CMI Winter Meeting, the group served as judges for the 24 posters presented, and participated in leadership development and science communication activities.

  

• The CMI Winter Meeting showcased the work of students and early career researchers, with 180people attending the meeting, which included 46 presentations by undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and researchers within the first three years of a career position. These included traditional and poster presentations, and a new category of three-minute or “lightning” presentations.
  • Best poster presentations: Adi Mussin, Colorado School of Mines, Mechanochemical Extraction of Lithium from Spodumene: Scale-Up of the MELLT Process, and Harshida Parmar, Ames National Laboratory, High coercivity Ce-Nd-Fe-B Nanoparticle
  • Best three-minute presentations: Anna (Anya) Berseneva, National Lab of the Rockies, Mechanistic Studies of Rare-Earth Permanent Synthesis via Calciothermic Reduction-Diffusion, and Hannah Gates, Iowa State University, REEFit for Designing Lanmodulin Variants with Lanthanide Target Selectivity

  • Best traditional oral presentations: Lesta Fletcher, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Harnessing Coordination Chemistry to Achieve Selective Leaching of Rare Earth Elements, and Carl Gorski, Colorado School of Mines, Scrub n’Sort: Producing a Dry RE Mineral Concentrate through Preferential Breakage at Bear Lodge

    

• The 2026 CMI Winter Meeting at Colorado School of Mines attracted 180 members of industry, universities, national laboratories, and the U.S. Department of Energy. The event focused on CMI early career researchers, with presentations and posters by students, postdocs and researchers within the first three years of a career position. Workforce development discussions included an alumni panel and info-gathering with the U.S. Department of Energy, which also provided updates from DOE. 

  

• CMI offered virtual presentation workshops presented by Dr. Jacqui Weeks, owner and founder of Word Tree Consulting, which was founded on the understanding that achieving breakthrough science and explaining breakthrough science are fundamentally different skill sets. Word Tree was designed to empower scientists to share their work with the wider community, not just by fixing grammar, but by helping scientists to understand and employ PhD-level narrative patterns. These were available virtually: Traditional Oral Presentations, 3-Minute Presentations, and Poster Presentations. These workshops were open to all CMI Team members and Affiliates. 
• CMI webinars are offered nearly monthly, and most are recorded. CMI webinars during the first quarter of 2026 were presented by guest speakers: Link to CMI webinars

CMI Outreach 2025

For further information please contact:
Celeste Stroup celeste.stroup@mines.edu
Program Manager, Education & Workforce Development