GEMOC ARC National Key Centre

Industry interaction


Industry interaction, technology transfer and commercialisation program

GEMOC relies on a vigorous interaction with the mineral exploration industry at both the research and the teaching/training levels.  The research results of the Centre's work are transferred to the industry and to the scientific community by:

• interaction through collaborative industry-supported Honours, MSc and PhD projects

• short courses relevant to the industry and government sector users, designed to communicate and transfer new technologies, new techniques and new knowledge in the discipline areas covered by the Key Centre

• one-on-one research collaborations and shorter-term consultancies on industry problems involving national and international partners

• provision of high quality geochemical analysis and interpretations to industry and government organisations, extending our industry interface

• use of Macquarie Research Limited (eg DIATREEM) and INAX (ANU) consultancies, which employ and disseminate the technological developments carried out by the Centre

• GLITTER, an on-line data-reduction program for Laser Ablation ICPMS analysis developed by GEMOC and (CSIRO GEMOC participants), is available commercially

• collaborative relationships with technology manufacturers (more detail in the section on Technology Development):

•  GEMOC (Macquarie) is the Perkin-Elmer Australian demonstration site
•  GEMOC (Macquarie) is the international Alpha test site for Merchantek Lasers

Support sources

GEMOC industry support includes:

• direct funding of research programs

• "in kind" funding including field support (Australia and overseas), access to proprietary databases, sample collections, digital datasets

• collaborative research programs (eg SPIRT, APA Industry and PhD program support)

• assistance in the implementation of GIS technology in postgraduate programs

• participation of industry colleagues as guest lecturers in senior courses (eg Bachelor of Technology)

• extended visits to Macquarie by industry personnel for interaction and research

The Slave Craton in analysis:Kevin Kivi (Kennecott Canada), Rondi Davies and Norm Pearson at the LAM-ICPMS.

Progress in1998

• The mineral exploration industry funded three postgraduate student projects in 1998.  In each case, the companies have provided invaluable in-kind support, and have been closely involved in shaping the research project.

• A new collaborative research project was started within the Lithosphere Mapping strand, (following the success of a separate project in 1996), with Kennecott Canada Inc.  1997 visits of GEMOC staff to Kennecott operations in Vancouver and Thunder Bay, and visits of Kennecott staff to Macquarie have been essential to the high-profile outcomes, many of which were presented at the 7th International Kimberlite Conference in Cape Town in April (see Appendix 4 for abstract titles).

• The impact of GEMOC's work on Lithosphere Mapping and applications to new concepts for Area Selection and Target Evaluation in the diamond exploration industry were evidenced by 23 presentations by industry at the 7th International Kimberlite Conference in Cape Town that used our new methodologies.

• Industry Reports completed for collaborative and consulting projects

• A collaborative project using gravity data of the Siberian lithosphere to interpret effective elastic thickness and integrate this with tectonic analysis and geochemical data, was negotiated with Western Mining and VSEGEI, St Petersburg.  Planning and workshop sessions at Macquarie with participants from Western Mining, VSEGEI and GEMOC are key activities.

• De Beers (Johannesburg) provided capital contributory funding for the new MC-ICP-MS and have a schedule of regular visits to Macquarie to participate in aspects of the development of LAM-ICPMS and MC-ICPMS techniques and applications

• BHP is sponsoring a strand of technology development (and a related research project) on the LAM-ICPMS: Dr Steve Walters spends research periods at Macquarie to participate in this collaboration

• Many companies have provided high levels of in-kind support in the form of samples: these include access to over 1000 diamonds through Rio Tinto, Kennecott Canada and Diamond Ventures Ltd, field logisitic support by Ashton Mining for PhD students to sample the Merlin and Coanjula (NT) kimberlites, volcanics and xenoliths.

• The Industry and Training Workshop on "Tectonic Evolution of East and Southeast Asia: A Framework for Reconstruction and Resources" was given by distance delivery with 4 volumes of notes and the interactive CD-ROM.  These have also been used for in-house training in several companies and at AGSO.

• Mr Bruce Wyatt, Director of Research and Technical Services at Stockdale Prospecting Ltd has a formal research collaboration and spends regular research time at Macquarie

• numerous industry visitors spent varying short periods at GEMOC in 1998 to discuss our research and technology development (see visitor list, Appendix 3)

• DIATREEM continued to provide LAM-ICPMS analyses of garnets and chromites to the diamond-exploration industry on a routine basis, in cooperation with CSIRO-EM

• GEMOC publications, preprints and non-proprietary reports are available on request for industry libraries

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