Critical Materials Innovation Hub Internship Program - Undergraduate and graduate students

CMI INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

2026 Call for Applications

The Critical Materials Innovation Hub (CMI) invites undergraduate and graduate students to apply for our Summer 2026 internship opportunities. 

1. Program description

The program is a 2-part internship combining an initial experience at a national lab or university with a follow-on experience at a company. Part 1 is a research internship of approximately 10 weeks for a summer internship at a CMI national lab or university actively engaged in CMI research. Part 2 is an immersion experience of up to five days at a company that is a CMI Team member or Affiliate. The purpose of this immersion experience is for the intern to better understand the broad commercial context in which research occurs. Activities could include touring a production facility, visiting an industrial pilot or demonstration plant, shadowing a company professional, and others. Part 2 activities will help the intern understand operations and constraints of industry scale processes and ingredients for successful transition of an idea from laboratory to commercialization.

CMI will provide:

(a) A flat stipend to the intern of $17,000, inclusive of travel expenses.

(b) Invitation to attend the 2026 CMI Annual Meeting (date and location TBD), and travel funds to attend. 

(c) Travel funds for both the intern and the mentor to participate in the immersion experience at a company.

The CMI project will provide other support for the internship research through its existing funding. This includes a mentor who will define an appropriate work scope and duration to match with the student’s technical skills. The mentor will ensure smooth onboarding for the project’s intern and will arrange phase 2 visit logistics. 

2. Eligibility: Open to both undergraduate and graduate students from any U.S. college or university, as long as they are not currently working on a CMI project. We encourage applications from students from non-CMI institutions, especially those from under-represented groups.

Degrees of interest: chemical engineering, chemistry (inorganic, analytical, physical), chemical science, electrochemistry, material science, physics, metallurgical engineering, social science and environmental science.

3. How to apply:

Apply by Friday, February 13, 2026 via Handshake with the following materials:

1. CV 
2. 1-page statement of purpose indicating 2 choices of the projects listed at https://iastate.box.com/v/cmi-intern-opportunities-2026 and the reasons for choosing those projects

4. Project descriptions:

No.

1

Enabling lithium mudstone: the nation’s largest lithium resource (Project ELM)

Project description: This project seeks to use high-precision geological and mineralogical characterization methods to guide the development and testing of several distinct hypothesis-driven extraction approaches for the nation’s largest lithium resource. This approach motivates thorough examination of lithium mudrock mineralogy and thermochemistry to inform novel methods of lithium separation. The major goals of the proposed work will follow from two simultaneous technical tasks. One is characterizing the nature of lithium (Li) and other critical materials from the McDermitt caldera deposit. The other is testing novel metallurgical extraction methods for Li from these resources.

At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the intern will develop skills for automation of mineral processing to develop an automation workflow for efficient lithium and magnesium extraction from clay in McDermitt, Oregon. 

2

Enhancing critical mineral separation with a dual-ligand approach

Project description: Rare earth element (REE) separations remain a grand challenge, accounting for the major cost in producing purified REEs from ore. The current state-of-the-art for industrial REE separations utilizes solvent extraction with phosphonic acids, a complex process notorious for its excessive chemical consumption, wastewater effluents, and hundreds of processing steps required to produce individual purified REEs. This project seeks to facilitate domestic REE production by developing a technology for the separation of all critical REEs using a two-ligand approach that combines lipophilic and hydrophilic neutral ligands with contrasting selectivity.

At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the intern will develop skills in solvent (liquid-liquid) extraction, analysis (ligand and ion concentration determination) to analyze changes in acid and ion concentration and solvent viscosity over time (during calibration, extraction, scrubbing, stripping, and re-extraction stages).

3

Biological separation of energy-critical rare earth elements

Project description: This project seeks to develop an economical and environmentally sustainable protein-based process for rare earth element (REE) separation from electronic waste (E-waste). Researchers will target separations that range from relatively “easy” (i.e., neodymium (Nd) v. dysprosium (Dy)) to highly challenging (i.e., Dy v. terbium (Tb), and Nd v. praseodumium (Pr)) using size-reduced lanmodulin proteins. By combining the acid-free leaching process with the all-aqueous protein-based REE separation process, researchers anticipate the development of an end-to-end process with significantly lower chemical consumption and environmental impact relative to conventional hydrometallurgical processes.

At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, potential skills learned by the intern will depend on the specific project but may include biochemistry, protein purification, column chromatography, first principles modeling (thermodynamic and kinetic analysis), and high throughput biological assays. The intern will work on 1) Thermodynamic analysis of a lanmodulin variant of interest; 2) REE separation method development with a lanmodulin variant of interest; and 3) High throughput characterization of REE selectivity of lanmodulin variants. 

4

Thin film semiconductor recycling

Project description: This project seeks to develop an electrochemical path to effectively substitute or reduce chemically intensive recycling methods currently applied for the recovery of cadmium (Cd) and tellurium (Te) in thin film CdTe-based photovoltaic (PV) panels. The goal is to lower cost and environmental impacts through reduced chemical use, milder/safer operation and lower waste generation. Work will be performed with First Solar, a current manufacturer and recycler of PV panels.

At Idaho National Laboratory, intern will develop skills in Inorganic Chemistry, Electrochemistry, Materials Chemistry, Separation and Purification Chemistry.  

5

Lithium recovery from diluted sources

Project description: This project aims at extracting lithium (li) from the costless brine, produced water, or lithium mining waste solutions, which will help solve the supply chain issue for lithium by unlocking domestic resources. Li is the only critical metal in the cathode common to all current types, making it the hardest to replace.  

At Idaho National Laboratory, develop skills in electrochemical cell design and assembly, and Electrochemical methods (cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry, chronopotentiometry, etc.)

6

Advanced computational thermodynamics and kinetics

Project description:  This project seeks to develop, validate, and exercise computational thermodynamics, microstructure evolution and ab initio methods, and alloy optimization software packages, including their integration into high-performance software packages, to improve efficiency in rare earth metal production and design and processing of new and existing magnets. By design, this project welcomes collaborations across the Critical Materials Innovation Hub and is not topic limited. The modeling tools developed will be used to study new materials for alloy design and integrate new models for process optimization. This work focuses on rare earth metal production and REE and critical REE-free permanent magnet formulations. 

At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the intern will gain hands-on experience in alloy synthesis, heat treatment, and microstructural characterization. They will learn to interpret experimental data for thermodynamic modeling and understand how experimental and computational approaches are integrated in CALPHAD-based materials design. The intern could conduct an independent study on the phase equilibria of a binary or ternary subsystem of the critical elements alloy to generate experimental data supporting ongoing CALPHAD model development within the CMI collaboration.

7

Critical materials process thermodynamics (CMPT)

Project description: This project aims to gather thermodynamic data and use this information to help other Critical Materials Innovation Hub projects solve processing-related problems. Very frequently, a process's thermodynamic analysis can reduce the time required to solve a problem and provide a more complete understanding of the process. The thermodynamics team will build on its critically evaluated databank by providing simulations and expanding its database. These efforts enable CMI researchers to have realistic process modeling to create better experimental designs for solving process-related problems.

At Rutgers University, the intern will develop skills in using thermodynamics software and measurements of solubility. The intern will be helping to measure solubility data that enables us to develop a liquid membrane model for rare earth separations.

8

Market and supply chain analysis of critical materials

Project description: This project seeks to provide decision-making tools at the system level that ultimately will help mitigate supply chain risks, utilize materials more efficiently, and increase the likelihood of adoption of CMI technologies. Main methodologies will include stakeholder engagement approach to identify supply chain bottlenecks, operations research and market modeling to understand market/technology landscape over time, and dynamic integration of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and market modeling to inform technology development. By adopting a proactive approach to material supply chain dependencies/interactions, the project looks to mitigate supply chain concerns, ensure sustained progress and the pursuit of promising avenues of research and development activities for CMI technologies, and quantify supply chain impacts of CMI technologies at national or global levels.

At Idaho National Laboratory, the intern will develop skills in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, visualization, and dashboard development. Data visualization / dashboard / web platform to educate scientists / community on (1) the applications having the most impact on the supply chain and (2) e-waste recycling.

9

Enhancing criticality assessment – from backward-looking to anticipatory perspectives

Project description: This project will research understanding the history of materials criticality, and developing ways to reliably predict the future criticality of minerals in the U.S. economy. Compared to existing analyses, this project will be more forward looking and focused on identifying what might become critical, more in-depth by focusing on specific supply chains in specific energy-technology areas, and broader by evaluating the environmental and social dimensions of critical materials as well as supply chain risks and resiliency.

At Colorado School of Mines, the intern will gain hands on training in polymer synthesis and critical mineral extraction and associated instruments (e.g. NMR, LC-MS GC-MS, ICP-OES) while working on the financial implications of criticality designation or stockpile funding.