TAKE-IT-ESEE: A fully international student project in the mineral exploration education

Since 2021 September a superb joint initiative has been worked by the geologist – geophysicist student teams of Miskolc, Cluj (Kolozsvar), and Zagreb. The Canadian PDAC (which is the most prestigious international organization for ore mineral exploration)  has published a call for the  Frank Arnott Award contest, which holds the name of New Generation Explorationists Award (NGEA). The contest aims at helping the training of new generations of mineral exploration professionals. The final of the contest will be held at the PDAC Convention in March 2022 in Toronto for those, who successfully passed the elimination, with submission of an evaluation study, closed at 30 November.

The core of the contest is project evaluation. The databases for the different projects have been provided by the  state or private exploration organizations of USA, Canada, UK, Australia and other countries. Our team has chosen the TELLUS project evaluation of Ireland – Northern Ireland, and interpreted the orogenic gold potential of the anomalous areas.

A group photo illustrates the really colourful nature of the team, with students of six different European universities.

The team meeting on every Monday were delivered through the internet, and the groups in three countries, plus the coordinator in the fourth country, worked using a common server for continuous data exchange.  

To complete the tasks the basic activity was a statistical,  and geoinformatical data processing  of the provided database. This has been possible by widescale harmonization of the softwares used, and a continuous exchange of the observations, This has been extended to historic mining data, mineralogical records of surface outcrops, geology, geochemistry, structural elements.

After several months of work, the study was successfully completed and the team uploaded the study to the Canadian server on time. On the map attached to one of the end products of the work, 5x5 km yellow-brown cells protruding from the blue sea of ​​small numbers represent areas proposed as exploration targets.

The submitted presentation is now awaiting evaluation. Regardless of the outcome, success has already been achieved. The completed very high quality evaluation work was a unique opportunity to learn about the raw material research processes that occur in life. An international team developed a lack of data within a tight timeframe until research targets were identified - this is a real preparation for life - the result of the competition can only be a modest addition. Let's wait for the end.

Thanks to the organizers, the professors: Ágnes Gál, István Marton, Ferenc Mádai, Ernő Takács, János Földessy, and the coordinator, Dávid Csomai, and the others at all locations. We keep pushing the team ....