Dr. Widi Astuti is researching materials science at Pennsylvania State University. Her research project is “Valorization of acid mine drainage (AMD) for extraction of critical minerals (rare earth elements [Sc, Ni, Co, Mn, Fe]) from Indonesian nickel laterite ores.” She aims to learn more about extractive metallurgy for processing abundant mineral resources to produce strategic and critical metals and to be applied on an industrial scale.

She is a researcher at the Research Center for Mining Technology, BRIN, Lampung.

Dr. Widi earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Universitas Gadjah Mada, a master’s in mining engineering from Institut Teknologi Bandung, and a PhD in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy from Kyushu University, Japan.