Dan Manaig is a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering specializing on metallurgical extraction of critical elements from secondary resources. Dan holds a triple-master’s degree in georesources engineering (innovation in geometallurgy) from Université de Liège, École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie-Université de Lorraine, and Luleå tekniska universitet under the Erasmus Mundus scholarship. He received his bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He is passionate about the circular economy and geopolitics of critical metals enabling advanced battery technologies and next-generation semiconductors.