Investigating secondary resource potential from QLD mine waste through sampling and analytical experiments on waste rock at mine sites
Tomás León Cortes earned his BSc (Hons) in Geology from the University of Chile in 2014, with a thesis on shallow ocean marine geology characterisation and underwater archaeological prospection in northern Chile. In 2018, driven by a deep passion for coastal dynamics and natural hazards, Tomás obtained his MPhil in Earth Science from the same university, where he investigated sedimentological and archaeological evidence of Holocene paleotsunamis on the northern Chilean coast. In 2020, he was awarded a scholarship by the Chilean government through their Becas Chile program to pursue a PhD which Tomás earned in 2024 from The University of Queensland (2024), focusing on improving tsunami hazard assessment in North-Central Chile through geological evidence and numerical simulations of historical and paleotsunamis.
Industry
Tomás is experienced in mining industry consultancy with over three years of managing large databases at Geovalidata in Chile. In this role, he managed and performed QAQC for BHP's exploration and extraction projects in South America, North America, and Australia, while also liaising with colleagues and clients for geological evaluations and fieldwork in Chile.
Collaborations
During Tomás' PhD - due to the COVID-19 pandemic - he had to shift his project from fieldwork to a desktop-based approach, necessitating a solution for collecting field data in Chile. Leveraging strong connections with his alma mater, a collaboration was initiated between his project and the University of Chile. This collaboration led to the creation of an honors thesis at the University of Chile to collect and analyse palaeotsunami samples later used in numerical simulations. This thesis was successfully finished in 2022 by a Chilean student.