July 21, 2023
It’s shaping up to be a busy summer for Alex Gysi, an economic geologist at the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources. He started in July in Lyon, France, at the Goldschmidt Conference, the foremost international conference on geochemistry and related subjects, organized by the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society.
“It was great to connect with people again,” Gysi says. “We ran a two-day workshop with about 30 people in attendance. Our New Mexico Tech students and postdocs did a great job presenting new Department of Energy and National Science Foundation-funded research on rare earth elements. They have lots of upcoming articles this year, so stay tuned!”
In mid-August, Gysi will head to the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland, for an invited seminar on developing geochemical modeling programs and thermodynamic databases. The seminar will be hosted by PSI’s Laboratory for Waste Management, whose mission is to carry out a comprehensive research and development program supporting Swiss radioactive waste disposal options. He’ll then travel to Zürich to co-host a session—"Critical minerals and geo-inspired technologies for a carbon-neutral future”—at the 17th biennial meeting of the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits.
Finally, Gysi will return to France in September, this time in Orléans, for a new research collaboration. “I plan on doing some new experiments, and also invite our collaborator next year to New Mexico Tech,” he says. “We are gaining significant international visibility.”