Professor David Giles

Prof David Giles is John Ralston Chair of Minerals and Resources Engineering at the Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia and Chief Scientific Officer of MinEx CRC. 

Prof Giles has over 20 years’ experience in minerals exploration spanning the boundaries of industry and academia. He graduated from Monash University, Australia in 1992 with a BSc Honours in Geology.   Thereafter he worked for Billiton (later Acacia Resources) and the Great Central Mines group of companies on exploration and development projects in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.  Prof Giles completed a PhD at Monash University between 1996 and 2000 in a collaborative project focused on Broken Hill type mineralization and sponsored by BHP Billiton.  Following a series of post-doctoral positions associated with the Australian Crustal Research Centre at Monash University, Prof Giles moved to Adelaide University as the inaugural State of South Australia Chair of Mineral Exploration and Director of the Centre for Mineral Exploration Under Cover in 2006.  Recognising that the challenge of renewing Australia's dwindling resources inventory will not be met without new technologies linked to modified exploration practices, Prof Giles became involved with the inception of the Deep Exploration Technologies Co-operative Research Centre (DET CRC) leading to a successful bid in 2009.  Prof Giles was Leader of Program 3 (Targeting) within DET CRC between 2010 and 2018. 

The MinEx CRC  (with funding from 2019 - 2028) builds from and extends the vision of DET CRC and includes collaboration with all Australian state Geological Survey organisations and Geoscience Australia to execute the National Drilling Initiatve (NDI).  In the NDI we deploy the novel drilling, sampling and surveying technologies developed in MinEx CRC to under-exployed frontier mineral provinces where increased knowledge of the geology (and potential for mineralisation) has the potential to unearth new mineral discoveries.  

Prof Giles’ academic interests are founded in Proterozoic tectonics and metallogeny but (increasingly) have broadened to include mineral systems and the technology required to explore within them.  He has developed the view that the next generation of mineral discoveries will not be made by continuously recycling the exploration concepts and techniques developed over centuries of exploration in exposed mineral provinces.  Rather a new set of fit-for-purpose tools are required, designed based on a knowledge of the deep exploration search space, and focused on exploration ‘productivity’ (rapid, cheap, safe and environmentally friendly drilling combined with real time down hole sensing and top-of-hole analysis to inform timely decision making).  This requires an explicit collaboration between geoscientists and drilling engineers, with commercialisation pathways identified during the research planning process – rather than applied as an afterthought.

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy Monash University

• Bachelor of Science Honours Monash University