16^th IAGOD Quadrennial Symposium 2026

Nigel obtained his PhD from the University of London and joined The University of Adelaide (now Adelaide University) in 2009. Nigel is a mineralogist-geologist with research interests across complex ore deposits, geochemistry and geometallurgy. He has been Director of a multimillion dollar Industry Consortium 'Unlocking Complex Resources through Lean Processing', and previously the Director of the Australian Research Council Research Hub for Australian Copper-Uranium. Nigel’s research career remains strongly industry-focussed. He works with BHP and other major and junior mining and METS (Mining Equipment, Technology, and Services) companies in South Australia and interstate on projects that transcend discipline boundaries across science and engineering. Nigel was awarded two major Australian Research Council research grants in 2025 targeting the interplay between lanthanides and actinides in IOCG deposits, and computation approached to precious metal enrichment in common sulphides.

Nigel is a Past President of the International Association on the Genesis of Ore Deposits, a former Editor-in-Chief of Ore Geology Reviews, and former Chair of the International Mineralogical Association Commission on Ore Mineralogy. Nigel has been named three times as national research lead in Mineralogy and Geochemistry by ’The Australian’ newspaper.

Richard Sillitoe gained BSc and PhD degrees from the University of London, England. After working for the Geological Survey of Chile and then returning to the University of London as a Shell postdoctoral research fellow, he has operated for over 50 years as an independent consultant and adviser to more than 350 mining companies, international agencies, and foreign governments. He has worked on a wide variety of precious, base, and lithophile metal deposits and prospects in 100 countries and counting but focuses primarily on the epithermal gold and porphyry copper environments.

Professor Judith Kinnaird is internationally known for her work on ore deposits in Africa. She and a team of researchers have worked on copper mineralization in the Central African Copperbelt of Zambia and DRC; pegmatite-hosted tin, lithium, and uranium deposits in the Damara Belt of Namibia; tin, niobium and tantalum in Younger Granites of Nigeria; lithium and gem-bearing pegmatites in Zimbabwe and Somaliland; chromitite and platinum group metals in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa and Malopo Farms Complex in Botswana; lead-zinc deposits in Ireland and Archaean gold mineralization in South Africa and Mozambique. Currently she is focusing of vanadium, PGE, uranium, lithium, and rare earth elements needed for the Green Economy.

Judith has retired as co-director of a National Centre of Excellence (CIMERA) for Minerals and Energy Research Analysis, co-hosted at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and funded by the NRF/DST of the South Africa government. She is also failing to retire from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where she has been returning twice a year to give lectures for an MSc course in Economic Geology. She has received several national and international awards in recognition of her research.