Ph.D. Candidate at Queen’s University / Senior Exploration Geoscientist at GoldSpot Discoveries

McLean (on the left) investigating some artisanal workings in northern Chile with colleagues, 2016. The blue mineral is chrysocolla (and lots of it!), a copper silicate mineral found in the oxidized zones of some porphyry deposits.

I grew up in Pierson, in the southwest corner of Manitoba, and spent many happy childhood hours combing through rock piles and gravel pits looking for fossils, unusual minerals, and interesting textures.

After high school, I headed to Brandon University, and took a variety of first year courses on topics of interest, amongst them a geology course. It was something of a surprise that a career could be made from what I’d previously considered a hobby, and particularly that it intersected with other interests, like travel and the great outdoors. In the summer following first year I was lucky enough to get a summer job with the Manitoba Geological Survey at a core facility in Wabowden, which really solidified my interest in geology as a career path.

From there I continued to load up on geology courses and work in the summer in northern Manitoba, graduating in ’05 and entering the workforce. I started out as a junior geologist at an industrial minerals project in BC, and after about a year moved on to work on an exploration project in central BC, looking for porphyry copper deposits. Porphyry exploration really caught my eye and since then I’ve largely focused on this deposit type, with a brief hiatus doing well-site geology during the GFC.

As of 2020 I’ve explored in Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Australia, Zambia, and Turkey. It’s been an adventure.

At the onset of the pandemic, I shifted gears and came back to school, this time at Queen’s University in Kingston, to work on a doctorate related to Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence techniques applied to exploration problems. In parallel I work for GoldSpot Discoveries, a Canadian consultancy focused on the intersection of AI and exploration geology. Still having a great time but the day-to-day is much different than, say, 2019.

Brandon University was a great place to get started on this path. Small class sizes made it possible to interact directly with professors and have a good shot at getting summer work. The hands-on approach to learning taken at BU translated extremely well to hands-on work in the mineral exploration industry.