Early Career Professionals

Koray Tasbicen is a Ph.D. student at the Colorado School of Mines working on the evolution of Carlin-type gold deposits in Nevada. Previously, he worked on Au, Cu-Fe, and Cu-Mo systems in several metallogenic belts, including South Tien-Shan (Uzbekistan), Kiruna (Sweden), SW Laramide (AZ, USA), and Tethyan Belt (Turkey). He holds a master's degree from New Mexico Tech, USA, and a bachelor's from METU, Turkey. He is intensely engaged with the Society of Economic Geologists and served on the student's committee for 2021-2023 as the North America student chapter's representative. He volunteered with the Discovery to Recovery Podcast Series Team and hosted episodes during Season 4.

Joy is a Project Geologist with Wallbridge Mining, leading gold exploration programs in the northern Abitibi greenstone belt. With over four years of industry experience, she thrives in the dynamic environment of junior exploration, integrating hands-on field work with advanced data interpretation to develop and refine exploration targets. Joy earned both her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Toronto, with her graduate research focused on the geology and pyrite chemistry of the Fenelon Gold deposit in Quebec, Canada.

As an active member of the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG) since 2020, she served as President and Vice-President of the UofT Student Chapter, attended SEG field trips, and volunteered with online and in-person events. Joy is deeply committed to fostering knowledge-sharing within the geological community, bringing a unique blend of technical expertise, collaborative spirit, and innovative thinking to advance the field of economic geology.

George is a highly motivated geoscientist who obtained a Bachelor of Mineral Sciences degree from the University of Zambia in 2021. Since then, he has served as a Geologist at First Quantum Minerals Ltd in Zambia, actively participating in mineral exploration.

George currently plays an important role in the field of systematic surface and downhole data acquisition, with a focus on interpreting multi-disciplinary integrated datasets for both Greenfield and Brownfield Sedimentary hosted mineral exploration in the Central African Copperbelt. He has played an active part in regional generative exploration activities, primarily focused on the appraisal of regional prospectivity in portions of the Katangan Basin, for nearly three years. George’s contributions include the gathering and analysis of regional geological, geochemical, and geophysical datasets, all with the goal of improving our understanding of regional stratigraphy, gross depositional environment, structure, and mineral systems. Among his notable accomplishments is his participation in a collaborative traverse with the Geological Survey Department of Zambia and the University of Oxford, sponsored by First Quantum Minerals. George's contributions extend to early-stage and Due Diligence projects, where he engages in license-scale geological mapping, core logging and the acquisition and interpretation of soil geochemical data. His expertise has expanded to brownfields/near-mine exploration, involving core logging, operational management, and reviewing datasets aligned with the exploration model.

Jan is currently working as a project geologist in the discovery team of Anglo American in Europe. Prior to joining Anglo American in 2022, he worked for mid-tier and junior companies on early-stage exploration drill programs in Germany and Sweden. After starting his professional career in 2020, Jan has worked with different mineral systems, including sediment-hosted Cu, intermediate sulfidation epithermal Ag, polymetallic VMS as well as BIF-hosted Fe. Jan has B.Sc. in geosciences from the University of Münster and M.Sc. in economic geology from the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, where he was part of the SEG student chapter board for three years. Besides that, Jan was a visiting student at different universities in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Jan is a passionate geologist who loves to read rocks to reveal the processes that have formed our planet and its mineral deposits.

Angela is a PhD candidate at CODES (Centre for Ore Deposit and Earth Science) as part of a regional initiative towards critical minerals in Tasmania. Before joining CODES, Angela worked for 4 years in the mining industry, first as a mine geologist for Vale company in Sossego, a deposit related to the Southern IOCG Copper Belt in Carajás Brazil, and after as a project geologist at Anglo American Group of Discovery and Geoscience focused on Ni-Cu-PGE potential in Brazil. She holds a Bachelor’s in Geology and a Master of Business Administration in Data Science, both from the University of São Paulo. Angela has been involved with SEG since 2017 when she was in her bachelor’s as an active member of the Student Chapter in the University of São Paulo where she organized several events and students field trips.

Axel is an Argentine-Italian geologist who studied Geology in University of Córdoba, Argentina. He is currently a PhD Candidate at CODES (University of Tasmania) where his main focus for the next years will be developing vectoring and fertility assessment tools for Porphyry Cu-Au deposits by studying mineral inclusions in chlorite and muscovite from its alteration haloes. Axel has over 4 years of industry experience, for most of which he worked in high sulphidation epithermal Au deposit exploration at El Indio Belt in the Argentine Andes for Barrick. He also worked in metamorphosed low-sulphidation deposits at the Tipasjärvi Greenstone belt in Finland, where he also received his MSc. in Economic Geology degree from University of Oulu.

Poliana graduated from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and currently works as part of the Exploration Team at Nexa Resources, having previously served as a mine geologist intern at the Zn-Pb Vazante Underground Mine in Brazil for nearly two years. For her undergraduate thesis at UNICAMP, Poliana conducted petrographic characterization and geological mapping of Zn-silicate and sulfide ores in the Vazante mine. Poliana has been an active member of the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG) since 2018. During this time, she held key positions, including serving as the president of UNICAMP's SEG Student Chapter in 2020, and as South America's Students Representative for SEG's Students Committee until 2023.

Victor is a geologist with experience from generative to advanced exploration projects in multiple copper and gold mineral systems in South America; gold-sapphire-lithium exploration in Madagascar; ruby exploration in Mozambique; geometallurgical modeling and program execution. Part of the discovery and development team of the Soledad project in Peru with over 63,000 meters of drilling.

Graduated from the San Marcos University-Peru with thesis research for an engineering degree supported by IAMGOLD, Peru (2016-2017). Having done an exchange to the University of Chile (2015); a master’s in Economic Geology at UTAS, Australia (2018-2021), and currently a part-time Ph.D. candidate at UTAS, researching the mineralized tourmaline breccias at Soledad, Peru.