Welcome New Faculty and Staff

 
The EMS Energy Institute welcomes the following new members who have joined the Institute since our last publication. 

Heather Harpster 
Administrative Support Assistant 
EMS Energy Institute

Heather Harpster assists with the preparation and submission of grant proposals, creates and maintains documents and files, and assists faculty with the submission of reports. She also helps generate, prepare, and maintain financial reports/spreadsheets, and acts as the Institute’s key custodian. Prior to coming to the EMS Energy Institute, she was a Career Services Assistant at South Hills School of Business and Technology. In that position, she designed various materials and worked with students, graduates, and employers. 

Stacey Horner 
Administrative Support Assistant 
EMS Energy Institute

Stacey Horner is the assistant to the director of the EMS Energy Institute. She schedules meetings, meeting rooms, conference calls, and catering. She also handles travel arrangements and reimbursements for the director as well as other faculty and students. In addition, she processes research supply and equipment orders, makes fleet vehicle reservations, distributes visitor parking permits, and orders office supplies. She is in charge of all gas cylinder ordering. Prior to joining the Institute, she worked as a medical assistant.

Yaming Li 
Visiting Scholar 
EMS Energy Institute

Yaming Li is a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Dalian University of Technology, China. He is currently a visiting scholar at the EMS Energy Institute. Li’s research focuses on designing and evaluation of transition metal catalyzed cross coupling reactions, C-H activation, and carbon dioxide transformation and utilization. Projects relate to the conversion of carbon dioxide into chemical feedstock using late transition metal catalysts, for example the development of Ni and Cu catalysts for the coupling of Allyl chlorides with carbon dioxide into acrylic acid; mechanistic studies into the catalyzed carboxylation; and Cu catalyzed C-C, C-N, C-O and C-S Ullmann-type Coupling Reactions.

Shimin Liu 
Assistant Professor 
Energy and Mineral Engineering

Shimin Liu joined Penn State as assistant professor in 2013 after completing his doctoral degree from Southern Illinois University. His expertise is in gas storage and transport mechanism in coalbed methane reservoirs and carbon sequestration in geological formations, especially in the areas of laboratory characterization of gas-coal interaction, analytical modeling of gas transportation under in situ conditions for carbonaceous rocks, volumetric behaviors of coal with gas adsorption/desorption, carbon dioxide sequestration in coal seams, and enhanced gas production. His research interests include: reservoir assessment of unconventional gas resources, reservoir stress changes with depletion, gas drainage from coal mines, and geological carbon sequestration.