MIWATCH’s first international student intern
As MIWATCH continues to intensify research on reprocessing and extraction of critical metals from mine wastes, young engineers, and research scientists all over the world are welcomed to visit for placements or internships with the team, as was the norm pre-COVID. So it was great to see a return to this with the arrival of Kamara Joseph a student on the EMerald program based in Belgium.
Joseph had his Bachelor of Science in Geological Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology- Ghana (2020). During his BSc., he had the opportunity to intern with Asanko Gold Mines and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation as a Mine Geologist and Petroleum Geologist, respectively. After graduation, he served as a Geotechnical Engineer in the Building and Roads Research Institute (BRRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research- Ghana (CSIR).
Motivated by the interest to understand why foreigners purchased mining waste from artisanal miners in Ghana, he enrolled in the EMerald Erasmus Mundus Master programme in Civil Mining Engineering and Geology with a focus on Geometallurgy (2022-2024 in progress). Since the start of the programme, Joseph has been studying at Université de Liège (Belgium), École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie in Nancy (France), Luleå University of Technology (Sweden), and is climaxing his final semester of the programme with an internship and thesis with MIWATCH as a visiting student.
As we continue to grapple with the Australian summer the opportunity to safely get into the field is still challenging. Therefore Joseph’s research will focus on determining the environmental characteristics of Thalanga’s mine waste, a site recently sampled as part of MIWATCH’s GA and GSQ programs.
We look forward to working closely with Joseph over the next months- but first.. the Australian Mine Waste Symposium!