Leadership
Arash Dahi Taleghani
Energy and Mineral Engineering is well-positioned in terms of expertise, skills, and industry contacts that are key for implementing energy transition activities that require subsurface activities and relevant economic analysis. A successful center needs to bridge the relationship between researchers and experts in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences as well as the College of Engineering. Such inter-collegial efforts require an independent center to secure governmental, industry, and state funding with a more flexible contractual structure.
Zhen Lei
Lei is the associate director. Lei’s background in health and socioeconomic impact helps the center to expand in non-engineering aspects too. The PI is planning to get junior faculty members more involved with the center to grow natural leaders inside the center.
Sekhar Bhattacharyya
Sekhar Bhattacharyya, Ph.D., M.B.A., P.E. is an associate teaching professor and former Chair of the Mining Engineering program of the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Before joining Penn State, he was an Associate Professor of Mineral Engineering at New Mexico Tech and a visiting faculty at the University of Utah. In industry, he served as Senior Mining Engineer at Norwest Corporation (now Stantec) in Salt Lake City, UT; as Mine Engineer and production foreman at CONSOL Energy in Pennsylvania; as Manager of Projects for Joy Global (now Komatsu); and as Deputy Manager of Coal Mining Projects in CESC Ltd. (India).
