Contact Information
School: School of Earth and Oceans
Address: M006 Robert Street Building, Crawley
Office Phone:
Email: lisa.vella@research.uwa.edu.au
About
Lisa has a B.Sc. (Hons) in Geophysics from the University of Sydney, a Bachelor of Asian Studies from the University of New England and a Master of Science in Ore Deposit Geology from the University of Western Australia.
With over 30 years’ experience in the mineral resources industry, Lisa has worked for several companies, including Newcrest Mining (Telfer and Tuckabianna Gold Mines), WMC (Hill 50 Gold Mine, Three Springs Talc Mine, Olympic Dam Copper-gold-uranium Mine and projects/project generation in Australia, Eritrea, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, southern Africa, North America, Kazakhstan, Brazil and China), Teck Australia (Pillara Lead-Zinc Mine and Carrapateena IOCG deposit, project generation and evaluations), Southern Geoscience Consultants (Technical Director and CEO), Rock Solid Geophysics (as an independent consultant) and most recently Fortescue (managing the Global Geoscience team).
Lisa is passionate about mineral exploration and strongly believes a mineral systems approach to area selection and project generation, undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team, is one of the keys to success.
PhD Project
In early May 2026, Lisa commenced working on her PhD project, titled, “Controls on the orderly distribution of giant deposits in self-organised mineral systems: new predictive criteria and analytical tools.” Through a combination of spatial analyses of pattern complexity and order, 3D computational modelling and simulation of fluid flow patterns, investigating the interdependencies leading to self-organisation of mineral systems, and field validation, this work will consider the question of predicting giant ore deposit distribution.
Support for this project is gratefully received from Strategic Energy Resources, the Australian Government Research Training Program Fees Offset Scholarship, UWA Scholarship (Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend) and MRIWA (PhD Scholarship for Women).
Additional Information
ORCID ID: click here
UWA Profile: click here