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A team of 91ÉçÇø¸£Àû students snagged the $20,000 Geothermal Technologies Office Bonus Prize during the 2025 EnergyTech University Prize Competition organized by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Technology Commercialization. The national competition challenges student teams to showcase creative ways to bring energy technology to market.

Named for a 20th-century geochemist who determined the age of Earth and the solar system, and who conducted foundational analyses of lead contamination in the environment, the annual award recognizes innovative contributions to environmental geochemistry, particularly in service to society, within the last decade.

Some 390 million years ago in the ancient ocean, marine animals began colonizing depths previously uninhabited. New research indicates this underwater migration occurred in response to a permanent increase in deep-ocean oxygen, driven by the aboveground spread of woody plants — precursors to Earth’s first forests.

The findings could inform planetary health assessments, enhance ecosystem management, and guide climate change projections and mitigation strategies.

The imprints, preserved for about 380 million years, may hold clues to how animals first began moving on land.

The Duke Critical Minerals Hub was one of three faculty collaborations selected for support through a new internal funding opportunity. The project brings together experts from engineering and the natural and social sciences to establish an interdisciplinary platform for research and education on lithium and other critical minerals.

Much of the world’s lithium occurs in salty waters with fundamentally different chemistry than other naturally saline waters like the ocean, according to a new study published in Science Advances. The finding has implications for lithium mining technologies and wastewater assessment and management.

Satellite records show spectacular vegetation growth coinciding with the first year of the pandemic. Researchers investigated whether lockdowns played a role.

Meet the PlanetLab, learn more about its research focus, lab members' experiences in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

Duke study reveals low levels of common contaminants but high levels of other elements in waters associated with an abandoned lithium mine.

An international team of scientists has revealed high levels of toxic metals in global phosphate fertilizers using a variant of the element strontium to uncover such metals in soil, groundwater and possibly the food chain.

Meet the Vengosh Lab, learn more about its research focus, PhD students' experience in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

As the world undergoes the great energy transition — from fossil fuels to alternative energy and batteries — rare earth metals are becoming more precious.

A new 91ÉçÇø¸£Àû study finds that municipal waste incinerators' legacy of contamination could live on in urban soils.

Mixing toxic coal ash into acid mine drainage may sound like an odd recipe for an environmental solution, but a new 91ÉçÇø¸£Àû-led study finds that it can neutralize the drainage’s dangerously low pH and help reduce harmful impacts on downstream ecosystems—if you use the right type of ash. Using the wrong type of ash can create new contamination and not tame the drainage’s extreme acidity.