About Minerva

Mike O’Brien, PGeo, is a well-known geoscientist with 40 years of international experience in mining and exploration.

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.

Mr. Tillman is the principal of Pi Consulting, LLC, a private investment and consulting company.  He started his career on Wall Street in 2001.  In 2003 he  joined Harbinger Capital Partners, an NYC based hedge fund where he helped direct the future of many companies, overseeing ownership stakes and bankruptcies involving billions of dollars. He went on to provide myriad consulting services to investment companies and family offices as well as sponsoring or participating in business deals ranging from data centers to being the sole independent board member during Gawker Media’s bankruptcy.  Mr. Tillman holds dual BSM’s from Tulane University.

Mr. Jenkins has extensive experience in accounting, banking, securities regulation and corporate finance. Most recently, he has served as the Chief Financial Officer for a number of mining exploration and development companies, as well as with technology companies. Prior to his involvement with public companies he previously worked in corporate finance with brokerage houses in Vancouver and Calgary.

Chris Ahern is a software engineer with 25 years of experience, ranging from the administration of back-end Unix and Windows servers and databases, to front-end web development. After graduating from the University of Natal, South Africa, he started his career in the telecommunications industry, first with Telkom South Africa and later at MTN, a large mobile carrier in South Africa. After moving to Vancouver, he worked in a small consulting firm installing and configuring wholesale billing solutions for various telecom companies around the world until he joined Georeference Online Ltd (GOL) in 2007. At GOL he was intimately involved in the development of the company’s AI software, as well as being Product Manager of its cloud-based exploration logistics management system, CampControl.

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, and is currently the Chief Technical Officer for Semantics at Minerva Intelligence.

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.

Jan Glazewski is Professor in the Institute of Marine and Environmental Law at the University of Cape Town. He holds postgraduate law degrees from the London School of Economics (LLM) and the University of Cape Town (LLB), as well as an MA Environmental Studies from the latter university. His seminal book “Environmental Law in South Africa” (Lexis Nexis 2000) earned him an LLD by published work. Throughout his career he has worked at the interface of environmental science and law, including promoting sustainable development through law, particularly on the African continent. He holds dual South African and EU (Polish) nationality and travels to Poland frequently where he has a second residence. Jan was Special Advisor to the South African Minster of Environmental Affairs & Tourism in 2003/4 and was involved in the inclusion of an environmental right in both the South African and Namibian constitutions. He is an admitted advocate and prior to that was in legal practice with a Johannesburg law firm, where he qualified as an Attorney. Jan’s current research focuses include coastal area law, marine law and climate change, as well as energy law.

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.

Jake McGregor has been with Minerva since its inception. Having a background both in business and geographic sciences he plays a significant role in strategic decision-making regarding the administration of Minerva as well as the development of its technology. Jake is Minerva’s member representative to the Open Geospatial Consortium, and represents Minerva’s interests within the Standards Council of Canada and the International Standards Organization. Jake has diverse technical expertise ranging from spatial statistics, 3D data visualization, land cover classification as well as spatial data analysis and scripting.

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.