Dr Kate Smith

I have worked in the geosciences in the higher education sector as a lecturer, researcher and project manager since 1999. I started work at the University of Exeter in Penryn, Cornwall in 2012. Prior to that I was based at the Universities of Edinburgh and Iceland.

What I do at CSM

I am a research fellow in the European Union Horizon 2020 funded GREENPEG project, focussing on the environmental and social impacts of new techniques being developed for the exploration of buried pegmatites.

Many of the raw materials for green energy production, such as high purity quartz, silicon metal, lithium, rare earth elements, beryllium, tantalum, ceramic feldspar and caesium, can be sourced from a rock type known as pegmatite. The varieties of these which are most sought after are lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) and niobium-yttrium-fluorine (NYF) pegmatites, which are relatively common in Europe. The GREENPEG project will develop and test a set of high-level exploration technologies and algorithms to be integrated and up-scaled into flexible, ready-to-use toolsets for the identification of buried pegmatite ores. Validation of the new approach will be carried out in industry-led trials at demonstration sites in Norway (Tysfjord), Ireland (Leinster) and Austria (Wolfsberg) and application studies will also be done in Portugal and Spain. As well as the technical development and assessment of these technologies and algorithms, a key goal of GREENPEG is to minimise the environmental, social and safety impact of these developments.