Richard Sillitoe gained B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of London in the late Holocene before spending three truly formative years with the Chilean Geological Survey. The last 50 years have been spent swanning around the world as an independent consultant. These peregrinations involved exploration for copper, gold and other commodities in a wide variety of highly entertaining places and environments in 100 different countries. He has also succumbed to various tasks and duties on behalf of professional societies, including the SEG presidency in 1999-2000. His exploration activities and the odd publication have resulted in an embarrassment of honours, including the Haddon Forrester King Medal of the Australian Academy of Science, William Smith Medal of the Geological Society of London, Penrose Gold Medal of SEG and SGA-Newmont Gold Medal.

Katherine McKenna

Katherine is principal geophysicist at BHP in Perth, with over 30 years’ experience in mineral exploration, oil and gas exploration and applied geophysics. She started her career in mineral exploration in Australia and New Zealand and then moved into airborne and ground geophysical acquisition, processing and interpretation for mineral exploration companies, governments and oil and gas explorers. She has worked throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and Middle East. Katherine’s experience is in the use and integration of geophysical methods to enhance and improve geological knowledge under cover. In her present role at BHP, she is responsible for the use of geophysics for the Australasia metal exploration and generative groups. In 2021, she was awarded the ASEG 50^th Anniversary Special Award for exceptional and highly distinguished contributions to the ASEG, the profession and the broader community by a member, resulting in wide recognition across the geoscience community. Katherine holds a MBA from Curtin University, a BSc in geology and geophysics from Macquarie University and a BA in Classical Languages and Ancient History from University of New England.

John Greenfield is Principal Exploration Geologist NSW at Newmont Australia. He has a 1st Class Honours degree in geology from the University of Wollongong and a PhD from the University of Sydney, mapping in east Lachlan, east Antarctica and central Australia. After four years mapping in the Yilgarn for the Geological Survey of WA, he joined CSIRO Exploration & Mining working on base-metal mineral systems in Broken Hill and Indonesia. As a consultant with Gold Fields Ltd, he worked in Venezuela on orogenic gold targets near Choco 10. He was with the Geological Survey of NSW for 18 years, mainly leading the regional mapping team until becoming the 15th Director in 2014 and stayed in geological management roles until 2021.

Dr Richard Blewett PSM is currently a Director of a junior private company Weethalle Gold and a consulting services company GeoSystems Consulting Pty Ltd.

Prior to these roles, Richard was the General Manager of the Minerals Systems Branch at Geoscience Australia (up to 2021). He was responsible for leading GA’s minerals science programme, including carriage of the minerals component of the $225 million Exploring for the Future programme, as well as the promotion of Australia as an attractive investment destination for minerals exploration. Richard wrote the National Mineral Exploration Strategy, the Resources Data Strategy and was co-author of the UNCOVER strategy.

Richard is interested in the management and leadership of science and in geoscience education for the community.

Dr. Richard Lilly, BSc (Hons), PhD, FSEG, MAusIMM, MAIG

Richard Lilly is the Program Leader and co-founder of the National Exploration Undercover School (NExUS) at the University of Adelaide, and coordinates a range of applied economic geology research projects for companies including OZ Minerals and Mount Isa Mines.

Richard completed his undergraduate studies and PhD at Cardiff University (UK) in collaboration with the British Geological Survey and worked with Rio Tinto and Chevron before joining Mount Isa Mines (formally Xstrata Copper) exploration in 2007 based in Mount Isa, Queensland. In his role as senior exploration geologist he instigated and co-supervised a wide range of applied research projects with the aim of improving exploration targeting, before transitioning to an industry funded academic role in 2015. Since 2018 Richard has also led the NExUS program, a 3-week summer school, which aims to prepare Australia’s most promising geoscientists for a career in the minerals industry. Richard also lectures in economic geology and is involved with several national geoscience education initiatives.

Richard is passionate about rocks, advancing our understanding of ore systems, exploration through cover and teaching/mentoring the next generation of geoscientists.

Prof David Giles is John Ralston Chair of Minerals and Resources Engineering at the Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia and Chief Scientific Officer of MinEx CRC.  He has worked at the interface between academia and the minerals industry for his entire career; as an exploration and project geologist (1993-1996); as a PhD candidate and industry-linked post-doctoral researcher (1996-2005) and as the inaugural State of South Australia Chair of Mineral Exploration (2006-2016). Between 2010 and 2018 Prof. Giles was Program 3 (Targeting) Leader in the Deep Exploration Technologies CRC. As Chief Scientific Officer of MinEx CRC (2019-2028) Prof Giles’ role is to manage, support and champion the research efforts of a multidisciplinary team, distributed across industry, government and academia. The National Drilling Initiative is a key research program within MinEx CRC, designed to i) collect samples from the vast volumes of unexplored (potentially) prospective rocks buried beneath Australia’s extensive areas of shallow cover and ii) test, improve and validate novel exploration technologies, focused on and around the drilling platform and optimized for efficient exploration under cover.