Oscar Nordness wins $60,000 award as part of the Scialog: Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials initiative

Nordness has been awarded this prestigious seed funding after presenting his collaborative research proposal at the 2024 Scialog conference. During the three-day event, Nordness teamed up with fellow researchers, Erika La Plante from the University of California Davis and Matthew Nava from the University of California Los Angeles, to draft a proposal focusing on the initiative’s key theme: sustainable minerals, metals and materials.

Bringing together their cross-disciplinary knowledge, the team focused their proposal on the intersection of fundamental electrolyte transport, thermodynamics, and chemical separations. Through this crucial research, the team seeks to quantify the underlying mechanism that governs electrolyte behavior, which is essential for the design of new materials for chemical separations. In recognition of this pioneering proposal, Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and The Kavli Foundation have granted each member $60,000 to support them with their research.

Scialog, short for “science + dialog”, was established in 2010 by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA). Aimed at early career scientists, the initiative seeks to accelerate scientific breakthroughs by building a creative, cross-disciplinary network of scientists. Spanning three years, this new Scialog initiative focuses on Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials (S3M), a key scientific theme of global importance.

Held on September 4-7 2024 in Tucson, Arizona, this inaugural Scialog S3M conference engaged more than 50 Fellows selected from multiple disciplines, approaches and methodologies. Centering on the S3M theme, attendees discussed the challenges and gaps in current knowledge, and formed teams to propose high-risk, high-reward projects. On the final day, 36 projects were presented and only six teams, including Nordness’, were selected for funding.

The Department extends their congratulations to Oscar on this well-deserved achievement! We look forward to seeing the impact of your research in the field.