Biography
Subaru is a post-doctoral research fellow in the iCRAG Earth's Resources research challenge. He completed his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at Tokyo Institute of Technology and subsequently worked as a market analyst and project geologist based in Tokyo. In 2017, Subaru obtained his Ph.D. from Colorado School of Mines researching on the Santa Rita porphyry copper deposit in New Mexico and Summitville epithermal gold deposit in Colorado. After another 2 years in industry as a project geologist, he joined iCRAG to work on the Central African Copper Belt with Prof. Murray Hitzman.
The Central African Copper Belt (CACB) straddles the southern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and northern Zambia. The region is one of the world’s major sources of copper and cobalt. These metals are indispensable for rechargeable batteries, so critical for the shift to a low-carbon economy.
There are some geological similarities between the Irish Ore Field and the CACB in terms of being hosted in sedimentary rocks, associated with faults, etc. In my project I am aiming to unravel why there are the copper and cobalt deposits utilizing knowledge and experience accumulated in iCRAG through their research on the Irish Ore Field.
Technical description
The Lusale sedimentary basin is the South-eastern end of the currently known Central African Copper Belt and subsurface Cu-Co sulphide mineralization was firstly recognized in 2004. Since then, ongoing exploration activities have added significant amount of geological data on this relatively frontier area, however geology of the basin and mineralogical features of the mineralization are still largely unknown.
This research project aims to reconstruct the 3D stratigraphic and structural architecture of the sedimentary basin using the exploration database to understand their spatial relationships with the endowed Cu-Co deposits. This project also conducts petrological works utilizing instruments available at iCRAG and also other institutions to elucidate mineralogy, stable isotope signatures and timing of the Cu-Co mineralization.
Role
- Postdoctoral Researcher
Institution
- UCD
Research Area
- Earth Resources
Expertise
- Mineral Exploration
