Medals and Awards

Ross Large is Emeritus Professor of Economic Geology and the past director of the Centre for Ore Deposit and Earth Sciences (CODES) at the University of Tasmania. He is currently working as a consultant to the minerals industry. He received his B.Sc. (Hons) degree from the University of Tasmania in 1969, and his Ph.D. degree from the University of New England in 1974, followed by a postdoctoral position at the University of Toronto. For 13 years Ross worked in mineral exploration for Geopeko Ltd., exploring for gold, tin, and base metal mineral deposits. In 1984 he joined the staff of the University of Tasmania and in 1989 established CODES as a National Key Centre for Teaching and Research. Since then, CODES has progressed from a Key Centre, to an ARC Special Research Centre, and more recently to an ARC Centre of Excellence. CODES has become recognized as one of the top ore deposit research centers in the world. Ross has become internationally recognized for his research on the genesis of stratiform gold and base metal sulfide deposits in volcanic arcs and sedimentary basins. Ross stepped down from his director role at the end of 2012 to become a full-time research professor. Over the last 12 years, Ross has pioneered a new and novel line of research using the trace element chemistry of sedimentary pyrite to determine the chemistry of past oceans and relationship to plate tectonics and evolution of ores in sedimentary basins. Ross received the Waldemar Lindgren Award from the Society of Economic Geologists in 1983, was the SEG Distinguished Lecturer in 1998, was elected President of the SEG for 2004, and received the SEG Silver Medal in 2010. He and his coauthors received the Brian J. Skinner Award for the best paper in Economic Geology for 2011. Among his other recognitions and honors are the Presidents Award from the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, the Haddon Forrester King Medal from the Australian Academy of Science, an Order of Australia, and, with his team, the Eureka Prize for interdisciplinary research based on the geochemistry of marine pyrite.

For his M.Sc. degree in mineralogy (TU Clausthal, Germany) and his Ph.D. degree in geology (Rand Afrikaans University, South Africa), Jens Gutzmer conducted research on the origin and alteration of the world-class manganese deposits of South Africa. In recognition of this early research, he received the Waldemar Lindgren Award of the Society of Economic Geologists in 2001. While he subsequently maintained a strong interest in the genesis and paleoenvironmental significance of sediment-hosted ore deposits, he increasingly focused on building structures and teams facilitating interdisciplinary research and innovation in economic geology, geometallurgy, and mineral systems science. Together with Nic Beukes, he cofounded the PPM Group in the year 2000, followed by the South African Research Chair in Geometallurgy in 2008, both at the University of Johannesburg. Since 2011 he heads the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology in Germany as its founding director. In 2015, he also served as founding CEO of the EU-funded EIT Raw Materials, arguably the world’s largest innovation and education partnership for the raw materials sector. Despite his commitment to science management, he is still actively involved in the supervision and education of young researchers and enjoys every possible occasion to do field work.

Michael Anenburg is an experimental petrologist. He is currently an ARC Linkage postdoctoral fellow at the Australian National University, after obtaining his Ph.D. degree at the same institution for his work on metasomatism and mineralization at the Nolans Bore ore deposit in the Northern Territory, Australia. Michael’s interests include the thermodynamics, petrology, and geochemistry of rare earth elements, carbonatites, and other exotic terrestrial melts, platinum group elements, and various topics in igneous and hydrothermal petrology. He is also developing petrological and geochemical tools for porphyry copper and gold exploration, using experimental petrology methods on apatite, titanite, and zircon. Michael occasionally dabbles in the materials chemistry aspects of experimental and natural geologic minerals. Before moving to Australia, Michael earned B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, researching allanite geochemistry in the Troodos ophiolite of Cyprus.

Anne Thompson has 35 years’ experience working in and consulting to the mineral exploration industry, including field work and applied mineralogy. She was an early adopter of field spectroscopy and coedited the Atlas of Alteration, a resource for exploration geologists. Anne’s company, PetraScience, a partnership with John Thompson, focuses on technology, sustainability, and innovation in the mining industry. She has volunteered over 25 years with the Society of Economic Geologists, most recently serving as a Councilor and as producer and host for the successful Discovery to Recovery podcast, now in its second season. She has supported inclusion and diversity throughout her career by informal mentoring, supporting a variety of organizations, and helping to develop strategy. Anne received the Association for Mineral Exploration Frank Woodside Award in 2019 and the Women in Mining Canada 2020 Trailblazer award and was named to Women in Mining UK’s Global 100 Inspirational Women in Mining 2020.

Nicole Hurtig is an assistant professor in geochemistry in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at New Mexico Tech, New Mexico, USA. Her research focuses on hydro/geothermal fluids, ore deposits, and trace metal systematics in petroleum systems. In 2009, she worked for one year at the University of Iceland as a researcher sampling active geothermal systems and contributing to a thermodynamic data compilation for a thermodynamic calculation program package. She received her Ph.D. degree in 2014 from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her dissertation focused on metal solubility in vapor-like fluids and active geothermal systems. Thereafter, she was a postdoctoral fellow with the AIRIE program at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, for four years. She worked on Re-Os isotope and trace metal systematics of water-oil interaction applied to sedimentary ore deposits and petroleum systems. In 2019, Nicole took a research assistant professor position at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, where she worked for one year.