Higher Degree by Research Application Portal

The West African Craton remains a region of significant mineral endowment of global importance, with Tier 1 deposits of Gold, Bauxite and Iron. The region has been the focus of a 20-year collaborative research and training program (The West African Exploration Initiative) led by Mark Jessell at UWA with region and international university, geosurvey, and industry partners. This project has built a database with 1TB of geoscience information covering all aspects of geoscience information.

This project will in a first step develop Open-Source algorithms to clean, validate and harmonise the data collection. This will be combined with parallel efforts to extract knowledge graphs from legacy reports and build on existing codes developed at UWA that extract graph networks from geological maps. Once this work has been completed for key datasets, the student will apply AI/ML methods to attempt to address two linked questions, namely:

·         Can we identify key tectonic and metallogenic domains?

·         Can we develop a hierarchical multi-scale knowledge graph that enables us to characterise these domains in terms of fundamental metal-forming processes?

Mark.Jessell@uwa.edu.au

Geoscience background with strong Data Science training; Programming Skills

The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) is a program of independent, supervised research that is assessed solely on the basis of a thesis, sometimes including a creative work component, that is examined externally. The work presented for a PhD must be a substantial and original contribution to scholarship, demonstrating mastery of the subject of interest as well as an advance in that field of knowledge. 

Visit the course webpage for full details of this course including admission requirements, course rules and the relevant CRICOS code/s.