About Minerva

Mr. Smyth, PGeo, has an MSc Geochemistry, MSc Computer Science (AI). He is a geologist and software developer with 40 years of experience and worked for 25 years with Anglo American, including as VP Exploration. He was sent by Anglo to Imperial College, London to study AI applications in geology. He and his team discovered the Buzwagi Gold deposit in Tanzania in 1996; the Boyongan Cu-Au porphyry deposit in the Philippines in 1999, and GT Gold Corp’s Saddle Gold Project in British Columbia’s Golden Triangle in 2014.

B.Sc. (Hons), Dip Data Statistics, M.Sc. Eng., FAusIMM, FSAIMM, P.Geo. APEGBC, Pr.Sci.Nat. (RSA) Mike is a mining industry professional experienced across the spectrum of exploration and mine geology, geostatistics, resource estimation, and management. Mike has a reputation for innovative problem solving and strategic thinking, focusing, and integrating short-term actions with long-term goals. Mike has carried out numerous third-party and due diligence reviews and audits. He was the secretary and chairman of the SAMREC Committee from 1996-2011, contributing to the development of reporting codes, and has a deep knowledge of international mineral resource and mineral reserve reporting. Mike has worked on deposits in Canada, South Africa, Brazil, Ghana, Mexico, DRC, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Peru, United States, Ireland, Australia and Argentina.

Dr. Alan Mackworth is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. He was educated at Toronto (B.A.Sc.), Harvard (A.M.) and Sussex (D.Phil.). He works on constraint-based artificial intelligence with applications in vision, robotics, situated agents, assistive technology and sustainability. He has authored over 130 papers and co-authored two books: Computational Intelligence: A Logical Approach (1998); and Artificial Intelligence: Foundations of Computational Agents (2010; 2nd Ed. 2017).

Stephen Miller Richard obtained undergraduate degrees in Earth and Planetary Science and in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978. After a year working as an electrical engineer at Lawrence Livermore Lab, he returned to graduate school, obtaining a Master's degree in from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), both in Geology. Steve's graduate and post-doctoral work was focused on geologic mapping, structure and tectonics, and thermochronology, in complexly deformed terranes in the Arizona and California Basin and Range and the Fosdick Mountains in West Antarctica. In 1992 Steve was selected to fill a research geologist position at the Arizona Geological Survey (AZGS), and over the next 17 years worked on a series of geologic mapping projects in the Arizona Basin and Range. As chief of the geoinformatics section at the AZGS, Steve was engaged in geologic data management, development of GeoSciML, an XML markup language for geoscience information interchange, development of the US Geoscience Information Network and National Geothermal Data System (NGDS) to deploy web services for geoscience information exchange, the XML implementation of the updated international standard for geospatial metadata (ISO 19115-1), chaired the CGI Geoscience Terminology Working Group, and worked on projects developing a proposed architecture design and resource catalog system for the NSF EarthCube initiative. In 2016 he retired from the AZGS to work as a technical director with the Interdisciplinary Earth Data Alliance at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) until January 2018. Steve continues working on various geoinformatics projects including a resource registry for EarthCube and knowledge representation models for 3-D geology.

Dave Lefebure, PGeo, is a well-known Canadian geoscientist who has worked for geological surveys and mineral exploration companies for over 35 years, with considerable expertise in metal, industrial mineral and coal deposits. From 2002 to 2011, he was the Chief Geologist for the province of British Columbia. Dave led the creation of the British Columbia Mineral Deposit Profiles while working with talented economic geologists from the British Columbia Geological Survey (BCGS) and other global experts. The profiles Dave built on the United States Geological Survey's standardized collection of mineral deposit models help provide a complete, industry-oriented classification of Cordilleran ore deposits. During his career with the BCGS Dave was involved in supporting and improving the award winning MapPlace website, the first fully interactive government geoscience database online. He also was a key economic geologist involved in the metal and industrial mineral assessment of British Columbia in the 1990s, a global first for an entire jurisdiction. Dave Lefebure has worked in the field in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec and visited key mining districts across Canada and parts of the United States. He holds two advanced degrees in geology, a M.Sc. from Queen’s University and a Ph.D. from Carleton University. Since 1997, he has been an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria.

Lori Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Structural Geology at the University of British Columbia. She arrived at UBC in 1996, after receiving an MSc from the University of New Brunswick, and a PhD from Texas A&M University. Lori’s research is focused on mechanisms of deformation and strain localization in the crust. She has worked on diverse structural topics including structural controls and modification of ore deposits, the role of fluids on fault zone evolution, and the role of shear zones on the emplacement of dacite domes. Her research includes both field-based studies and experimental rock deformation. Lori and her graduate students have most recently completed structural studies of the richly-mineralized porphyry Cu/Au and epithermal Au KSM area in northwest British Columbia, the Gibraltar Cu-Mo deposit, and porphyry deposits in the Southern Coast Belt near Taseko Lakes.

Mr. Ballantyne is a geophysicist with over 31 years of global experience in multiple commodities. In 2010, he founded in3D Geoscience, a geophysical consulting services for the exploration industry. Mr. Ballantyne’s experience covers gold and base metals and 9 years in diamond exploration with Ashton Mining of Canada. At Ashton he was involved with Quebec’s Renard kimberlite cluster (from discovery to pre-feasibility), the discovery of the Lynx and Hibou dykes, and contributed to kimberlite discoveries in Alberta, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

Dr. H. Sebnem Düzgün, was born in Nazilli, Turkey and gradated the second in the class of 1992 from Department of Mining Engineering at Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey.  She started her graduate studies in the Department of Mining Engineering and got her M.Sc. and PhD. Degrees in 1994 and 2000, respectively from the same department.  She was a visiting scholar in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT from 1998 to 1999 with an award given by the Turkish Scientific and Technical Council (TUBITAK). She was appointed as assistant professor in Geodetic and Geographic Information Technologies Program at METU in 2001. She performed research as a postdoctoral fellow from 2004 to 2005 at Norwegian Geotechnical Institute and International Center for Geohazards with a grant from the Norwegian Research Council. She then returned to Department of Mining Engineering at METU in 2006 as associate professor and became full professor there in 2010.  Dr. Düzgün was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s experienced researcher fellowship in 2014 and used it to conduct research at the Geophysical Institute at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany from 2015 to 2016. She has been 18 years of experience in research and teaching in mining engineering on mine closure and reclamation, quantitative sustainability assessment for mining projects, risk and safety analysis for coal mines, mine environmental monitoring using remote sensing, reliability based design and analysis of rock slopes, uncertainty modeling in rock engineering, and interdisciplinary topics including geographic information systems, remote sensing, spatial and spatio-temporal data mining, landslide and earthquake risk assessment, critical infrastructure resilience. Dr. Düzgün is also on the Editorial Board of various scientific journals, namely Landslides, Journal of Sustainable Mining; Computers and Geosciences; International Journal of Emergency Management; Georisk Journal; Energy Exploration & Exploitation; and The Open Construction and Building Technology Journal. Since 2008, Dr. Düzgün has been serving as an expert evaluator and reviewer for the FP7 and Horizon 2020 European Commission`s Research and Innovation Programs (including the themes ICT, Secure Societies, Critical Infrastructure and the RFCS-Research Fund for Coal and Steel).  She is a member of SME, ARMA, ISRM, IEEE and ISPRS, USSD. Dr. Düzgün has authored four books, published 11 book chapters, more than 60 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, over 150 papers in conferences. She is the principal author of the book entitled Remote Sensing of the Mine Environment. Dr. Düzgün’s recent research areas involve quantitative risk and resilience assessment for mining hazards and geohazards, big data analytics, Earth observation in geosciences, virtual/augmented/mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) and serious gaming for technical training and collaborative decision making.  Dr. Düzgün has established the collaborative immersive VR laboratory at Mines.  She was founder and former CEO of the software company, Kuzgun Informatics, in Turkey, contributor to three ceramic art exhibitions, is the drummer in a local band, and is mother of two sons.