I am an exploration and mine geologist with 10+ years industry and academic experience, primarily in Australia. I have worked at a variety of mineral deposits including narrow vein gold (Jundee and Granites deposits) and IOCG (Priominent Hill), and green and brown fields exploration sites (Au, Cu, W) across Australia. My main interest lies in gold mineralizing systems, particularly orogenic gold deposits, and understanding deposit genesis, evolution, and regional metallogeny, with a focus on the practical application to mineral exploration and targeting.
My current research is based at the Coffee Gold deposit in the Dawson Range, west-central Yukon, and forms part of the MDRU-Goldcorp NSERC funded Yukon Coffee Gold Project. Coffee is a unique style of shallow level gold mineralization with similarities to orogenic and Carlin-type deposits. Two occurrences of mineralization occur at Coffee, hosted in Paleozoic metamorphic rocks and mid-Cretaceous granite; replacement wall rock mineralization, and breccia-hosted mineralization. Gold is hosted in arsenian pyrite, which replaces igneous and metamorphic biotite and phengite in the host rocks.
My PhD research aims to understand the genesis and architecture of Coffee. This will allow us to further understand the magmatic and metallogenic evolution of the Dawson Range, which is important for future targeting and exploration in the region. Furthermore, the unique style of mineralization at Coffee provides an important opportunity to investigate shallow level gold mineralization, and discuss the implications for our current understanding of gold deposit models. This will have important implications for gold exploration models.
