Roderick G. Eggert is Viola Vestal Coulter Foundation Chair in Mineral Economics at Colorado School of Mines, where he has taught since 1986. He also is deputy director of the Critical Materials Institute, a research consortium established by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2013, to accelerate innovation in energy materials. Between 1988 and 2006, he was editor of Resources Policy, an international journal of mineral economics and policy. Between 1998 and 2013, he was Economics and Business Division Director.

His research and teaching focus on mineral economics and public policy – especially, in recent years, on critical minerals and materials. He chaired the U.S. National Research Council committee that wrote the 2008 book, Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy (National Academies Press). He has testified on critical minerals and materials at committee hearings of the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and European Parliament.