Laurentian lands $49M from Feds for research

Sudbury’s Laurentian University says it is launching an “unprecedented research effort” to boost the discovery rates of new mineral deposits, with the largest funding announcement in the institution’s 56-year history.

The seven-year “Metal Earth” initiative costs a total of $104 million, with $49 million in support from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund and the remaining $55 million from 22 partners from academia, industry and government.

The research program aims to provide “industry and government with the new knowledge, highly qualified personnel, protocols, and tools to focus exploration and infrastructure dollars in areas with the highest metal endowment,” according to the university.

The program will see the recruitment of more than 35 post-doctoral fellows, research assistants, technicians and support staff; more than 80 graduate and 100 undergraduate students; and lead to the hiring of a research chair in Exploration Targeting and three specialized faculty members in Precambrian Geology, Earth Systems Modelling and Exploration Geophysics.

“Global metal reserves are being depleted due to increased demand and decreased global discovery rates over the past 10 years,” said Harold Gibson, director of the Mineral Exploration Research Centre at the Harquail School of Earth Sciences and lead of Metal Earth. “Spending on exploration has increased while discovery rates have decreased. Without a means to discover and extract metals, modern societies will be faced with a crisis that will detrimentally impact social, technological and industrial development.”