PhD student
Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET)
Contact details
Address
Robert Street Building, Rm 207
Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET)
The University of Western Australia (M006)
35 Stirling Highway
CRAWLEY WA 6009
Australia
Phone
+61 8 6488 1809
Email
21097784@student.uwa.edu.au
My name is Quentin (pronounce as Tarantino’s first name but in French). I was born and raised in Lille, an awesome French city at the top north of the hexagon. I have licked many rocks so far but I am craving to lick some more, which is one of the main reasons I joined the CET as a PhD student this year; the other obvious reason being “geology rocks”. My Christmas present was to be granted the IRPS scholarship to work on an exciting and challenging project in the West African Craton under the supervision of John Miller and Stanislav Ulrich.
I graduated with a Bachelors degree in geology at the National School of Geology (ENSG) in Nancy in 2009. Then I felt like I needed to practice my English (I am just French after all…) and to get rid of what Aussies consider a “lovely” French accent (it got worse instead…) And so I enrolled for a Master’s programme in the nice Swedish coastal city of Luleå (about 1200km up north from Stockholm: just picture something like Perth in the northern hemisphere). I took a small break after the first semester to get an insight on Swedish mineral exploration methods (boulder tracing, sniffer dogs,…) when I joined a Canadian-based junior called Northland Resources Inc. for a 6 months-training-period. I spent the coldest winter of my life there exploring for iron (-42°C one hell of a day!). Don’t get me wrong, it was an amazing experience (ice-hockey, sauna, vodka, snowboarding, ice-fishing, etc…)! I returned to the University after that to finish my Masters. I got totally out of control when I accepted to do my Master’s Thesis in Kiruna (located about 250km above the Arctic Circle!). My Masters Thesis has been done in partnership with Avalon Minerals Ltd.; a Perth-based junior company exploring for Cu-Fe ore in that area My work has been entitled “Volcanic and volcano-sedimentary facies analysis of the Viscaria D-Zone”. It consisted in a Cu-Fe deposit-scale detailed study. I graduated in March 2011. After few days of celebration I got offered a job in Perth with BM Geological Services. The rest of the story therefore brings me to WA shores where I have been working in gold exploration for the last 8 months (6 months at Carosue Dam with Saracen Gold Mines and 2 months in Kambalda with St-Yves Goldfields).
My PhD project will undertake a 4D reconstruction of the Sadiola gold deposit in Mali (West Africa) by integrating the structural, metamorphic and alteration history of the deposit. This project will aim to place the deposit into a regional framework, particularly with respect to the regional Senegal-Mali Shear Zone and other satellite deposits within the area. The project is funded by AngloGold Ashanti and is part of the WAXI Project.