Terry Hoschke graduated in geophysics from the University of New England in Australia in 1980. He worked as a geophysicist for Geopeko in the 1980s exploring for a number of commodities including gold, uranium and base metals. He managed the Darwin exploration office for North Limited for 3 years from 1992 and subsequently worked on porphyry exploration for North in Indonesia. He worked for Normandy/Newmont from 2001 to 2013 during which time he completed an MSc thesis on the geophysics of porphyry and epithermal systems. This was subsequently published by CODES. He is currently a geophysical consultant working mainly for Newcrest Mining and is an adjunct to the University of Tasmania.

Dr. Stephanie Sykora is currently an exploration geologist in global generative and research for porphyry copper with First Quantum Minerals Ltd. She completed her PhD at the Centre for Ore Deposit and Exploration Sciences (CODES), University of Tasmania, Australia, under the supervision of Professor David Cooke and Dr. David Selley. This focused on the giant Lihir (Ladolam) alkalic gold deposit in Papua New Guinea. Previously she worked for Teck Resources Ltd. in British Columbia, Canada, on porphyry copper projects, and prior to that she completed her undergraduate BSc degree at the University of Victoria, Canada. Stephanie is also an avid scientific communicator for earth sciences, and has been involved in numerous outreach programs. She authors the blog www.exploringtheearth.com and is active on various social media platforms.

Shawn B. Hood (MSc) is a field-oriented geologist undertaking PhD research at CODES on the subject of machine learning applications in metals exploration. Shawn’s employment experience ranges from Mongolian desert to Canadian Arctic to Australian salt-pan, and includes geology mapping, exploration drilling, mining (open-pit and underground), geological modelling, and resource estimation.

Steven Micklethwaite is Director of the Monash Drone Discovery platform, which operates a range of instruments, including high performance LiDAR and Australia’s only coaligned VNIR-SWIR hyperspectral camera integrated into a drone system. Trained as a structural geologist, his current research focuses on combining drones with high performance compute and computer vision techniques, in order to remotely sense or sample our planet. Recent breakthroughs have focused on the analysis of photogrammetric point clouds for geological field mapping, structural geology and ore deposit formation. Ongoing research includes interdisciplinary collaborations to attach geophysical sensors or develop swarm mapping capabilities, as well as the development of neural networks for mapping.