We’re hiring for an undergraduate summer internship!

Do you know any undergraduates looking to get experience in research? We’re hiring for a summer student to join our team & help us explore the critical mineral demand for the energy transition, ai and other sectors.

The project is titled: Understanding future critical mineral demand for energy, aerospace, AI and defence

Below is the project description:

Demand for critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements is expected to grow rapidly over the coming decades. Much of this growth is driven by clean energy technologies like electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. While these sectors are relatively well studied, far less is known about how demand for critical minerals could grow in other fast growing technologies, including artificial intelligence and semiconductors, defence and aerospace systems, and industrial equipment.

This project builds on ongoing research developed as part of the Climate Compatible Growth research programme. Our research team has already compiled a database that links different technologies (such as batteries and renewable energy systems) to the critical minerals they contain. The goal of this project is to expand that database to new sectors, helping researchers better understand how future technology trends could shape global mineral demand.

The Climate Compatible Growth research programme is a flagship programme funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office that seeks to support economic growth in the global south through climate action. The successful applicant will have the opportunity to work with a team of international researchers driven to make a tangible and meaningful contribution to the twin problems of climate change and economic development.

The successful student will work closely with the research team and will be responsible for:

• Identifying sectors and technologies that are likely to have critical minerals embodied in them.
• Conduct an analysis of literature, reports and other databases to understand how much critical minerals are embodied in each technology. The students will then form part of the decision making team to prioritise which technologies and minerals to focus on in future research.
• Using their newfound knowledge to help the research team develop new scenarios for technology development. This may include collecting data to help inform the scenarios for example GDP, government defence spending, ai capital investment, which could all be used to model future changes in demand.
• Support the research team to implement new data and scenarios into existing models.
• Produce a report setting out which sectors are likely to contribute to future critical mineral demand growth, the important minerals in each sector and how each sector might grow or evolve in the future.

This internship offers a hands-on introduction to applied research at the intersection of technology, sustainability and policy. The student will make a meaningful contribution to research with real world relevance and will gain experience working with researchers studying the entire critical mineral supply chain. It is well suited to undergraduate students with an interest in sustainability, engineering, economics, data analysis or related fields.

Further details are in the link here.

Image by Joakim Honkasolo on Unsplash.