Planning meeting description

Colorado School of Mines and Virginia Tech researchers have teamed up to develop an integrated approach to locating, characterizing, and visualizing mineral resources with the aim of boosting exploration success rates and advancing mining operations while cutting costs and minimizing both financial risk and environmental impact. The Center for Advanced Subsurface Earth Resource Models is an industry-funded consortium that will provide exploration and mining companies worldwide with new 3-D subsurface geological models to inform decision making and manage risk at all stages of the mining life cycle from exploration to operations and including mine closure and environmental reclamation.

The Center has been awarded early support for a Planning Meeting from the National Science Foundation (NSF), to enable the Mines-Virginia Tech university team and representatives from the exploration and mining industry sectors to define a joint industry and university research agenda, consolidate support, and develop a business plan under NSF's Industry/University Cooperative Research Center Program.

During the Planning Meeting participants will:

• Participate in a review of the Center's vision, capabilities, and value propositions that set the stage for member-inspired pre-competitive research and workforce development;
• Engage actively in Industry-moderated panel sessions that provide opportunity for the prospective members to express their interests and needs in the Center; and
• Identify areas of general, pre-competitive investigation and technology development that would complement industry R&D activities, help solve immediate and emergent sector needs, and lead to new or improved products and operations.

Who should attend?

Prospective members for the Center include: (1) companies of diverse size engaged in the exploration for and production of mineral resources; (2) the consulting and instrumentation companies that support mineral resource exploration, extraction, and processing; (3) companies with intent to expand their customer base in the mineral resource world, including those companies developing advanced software, computational, analytical, and graphical/visualization technologies; and (4) participants from federal agencies and the national laboratories who are engaged in research and development of the subsurface as this impacts mineral, energy, and water resources. Colorado School of Mines and Virginia Tech will bring university leadership and faculty experts to share in defining the Center and proposing potential research projects that are of value to the prospective industry members.

Why you should attend

CASERM will bring together faculty and students from Colorado School of Mines and Virginia Tech, companies, state/federal/local government and non-profits to perform industrially-relevant, cutting-edge pre-competitive research. This I/UCRC will develop high-impact solutions helping exploration and mining companies address challenges in the development and use of 3-D subsurface models for mineral resources through all stages of the mining life cycle. Members guide the direction of Center research and education through active involvement in research project selection and student mentoring. Investment by industry members is highly leveraged, with 90% of annual fees directed toward research. Learn more...

Meeting agenda

An agenda for the meeting is available. Learn more...

Location

The meeting will be held on the campus of Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado USA. Learn more...

Additional information about Golden is available. Learn more...

Registration

Registration for this event is open now. An online registration form is available. Learn more...

Travel and accommodations

Registrants are responsible for their own travel arrangements, transportation, lodging, and meals. Additional information is available through the links below.

• Travel and transportation
• Accommodations

Research themes

It is our vision to transform the way geoscience data is used to locate subsurface earth resources. The purpose of the center is directed toward research challenges in the development of 3-D subsurface geological models for mineral deposits, particularly as these models integrate diverse geoscience data to inform decision making and minimize geological risk, beginning with locating and mining subsurface earth resources and continuing through mine closure and environmental remediation. Learn more...

Further technical information

For more information about the meeting, please contact:

Richard F. Wendlandt
Department of Geology and Geological Engineering
Colorado School of Mines
Phone: 303.273.3809
Email: rwendlan@mines.edu

Matthias (Tia) Chung
Department of Mathematics, Computational Modeling, and Data Analytics
Virginia Tech
Phone: 540.231.3446
Email: mcchung@vt.edu