Building the Future of Energy and Critical Mineral Systems — End to End and Back
Physical, digital, and institutional — the three layers of the infrastructure of the future.
I am an assistant professor of Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering and Resource and Energy Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, where I direct the SEAR Lab and the RAID Lab. My work studies energy and critical mineral systems end to end and back — from extraction through manufacturing, deployment, and monitoring to end-of-life recovery and back to materials.
Physical
The systems that move energy and materials: mines and refineries, power plants, grids and pipelines, batteries and buildings. The lab works on them at the bench and in the field, from critical-metal recovery to asset tracking.
Digital
Mathematical optimization, simulation, AI/ML, design-of-computer-experiments surrogates, and specialized analytics (GIS, LCA, TEA), with RFID for asset tracking.
Institutional
The rules and agreements that make large systems viable: rule of law, contracts, financing, insurance and trust, along with policy and a trained workforce.
Mission. Build the Integrated Infrastructure of the Future: Physical, Digital, Institutional.
Vision. Advance innovation to drive sustainable resource abundance that elevates the human condition; here and among the stars.
Methods. SEAR specializes in mathematical optimization, simulation, AI/ML, and specialized analytics (GIS, LCA, TEA), with bench-scale chemistry for critical-metal recovery and RFID for asset tracking — the experiments calibrate the models, and the models design the experiments.
Start with about me, current research, the lab’s projects, or play with a toy model of the mineral–energy loop.