Denis Prodius is an assistant scientist with the Critical Materials Institute at Ames Laboratory, with years of experience working in recycling, recovery and separation of rare earth metals from a wide range of chemically processed materials (oxides, ionic liquids, oxalates, swarfs, and electronic wastes). His research resulted in the development of an original acid-free magnet recycling approach that enables the ‘green’ and efficient recycling of critical materials, including rare earths and cobalt, from waste materials. He is a recipient of the Ames Laboratory Inventor Incentive Award 2015 (1), 2017 (1) and 2018 (3). He is also the recipient of two U.S. patents (2018, 2020), two R&D 100 awards (2018), one TechConnect Innovation award (2019), and one Federal Laboratory Consortium Notable Technology award (2018). Before coming to the Ames Lab, he spent three years at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. He serves as a guest editor for the Energies special issue "Ionic Liquids in Energy and Environment" [LINK] and is a member of the editorial board for the journal Clean Technologies and Recycling [LINK].