At the nexus of technology and geopolitics, rare earth elements (REEs) have made the news almost daily over the past year. What are they, why are they so important, and why are we so concerned about how we get them? Can Nature teach us a different way forward? Scientists only recently discovered that certain microbes are able to take up and use REEs for essential cellular reactions. Cotruvo’s research group has been discovering and understanding the molecules involved in these processes for clues as to how we can engineer them into technologies, which are being explored commercially, for biomining REEs. The talk will address what all the recent attention on REEs is about and how biotechnology may help ensure a sustainable supply of REEs for the 21st century and beyond.
Speaker Bio
Joseph Cotruvo, Jr. is a professor of chemistry at Penn State. He graduated with an A.B. from Princeton University in 2006. He earned a doctoral degree in biological chemistry in 2012 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied how a key enzyme in pathogenic bacteria substitutes iron with manganese to help the pathogen survive the immune system. Cotruvo was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Berkeley as a Jane Coffin Childs Fellow, studying the role of copper in regulating fat metabolism. He began his independent career as an assistant professor and Louis Martarano Career Development Professor at Penn State in 2016, being promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2022 and to full professor in 2024. His laboratory works to understand how biological systems achieve selective recognition of metal ions and to develop biotechnologies for sensing, recovery, and separation of valuable metals, especially rare earth elements. The fundamental discoveries and translational impact of Cotruvo’s work have been honored with several national and international awards, including Penn State’s Faculty Scholar Medal in Life and Health Sciences in 2025, and intellectual property generated in his laboratory has been licensed by multiple startup companies.