A Northern Illinois University geology professor has won a $1 million grant to further her research.
Suzanne Autrey is an assistant professor of Geology at NIU. The grant from the U.S. Department of Energy will equipment for the Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Environment.
The money will be used, in part, to bring a spectrometer and scanning electron microscope to campus.
Autrey developed a new technique for reconstructing pressures of crystallization during critical-mineral formation.
“How we study the pressures where these minerals form, and then we are going to apply it to natural systems so that we can hopefully have a better tool for understanding where in the earth these critical minerals are going to concentrate,” she told WNIJ.
Autrey is 1 of 67 scientists nationwide who earned funding through the Early Career Research Program.