Get to know us
Why us?
Every member of the VECTOR team is motivated to create a more sustainable and environmentally conscious world. We come from a diverse range of backgrounds, representing a range of society. We are committed to impartial and ethical research, to better understand how to move towards a more sustainable future in a responsible manner. We will communicate our findings openly and transparently, along with its implications for a global green future.
Ethics commitment
The VECTOR consortium is committed to ensuring the highest level of ethical conduct during the VECTOR project, with respect to both the conduct of the project and its outputs. We recognise that due to the subject matter of the VECTOR project, there are sensitivities surrounding some of the research and development to be undertaken, and in line with our ambition to take a human centred approach to this project, we are keen to make every effort to allay concerns around the handling of these sensitivities and ensure they are managed in accordance with the highest ethical principles.
In order to put this commitment into practice, the VECTOR consortium has appointed an Ethics Advisor, who will be
responsible for advising the project on ethical matters and Chairing an Independent Ethics Committee, which will bring subject matter expertise to ethical deliberations.
The Independent Ethics Committee (with the Ethics Advisor as Chair) sits within the Project’s broader governance framework and operates independently, but alongside, the Project’s Advisory and Executive boards. The Project’s governance structure has been designed to ensure that ethical matters arising during the course of the Project are considered by expert, independent third parties and that their advice feeds into Project decision making processes and is implemented by the Project working parties
The people
Alla Dolgopolova
SENIOR RESEARCHER IN MINERAL DEPOSITS
Alla Studies mineral deposits of metals critical for our economy and their extraction in the most environmentally friendly and ESG-compliant way.
Juan Alcalde
JUAN DE LA CIERVA RESEARCH FELLOW
Juan is a geologist and geophysicist at GEO3BCN-CSIC, working in subsurface geoenergy applications and raw materials exploration for the Energy Transition
Shane Bergin
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN SCIENCE EDUCATION
Working with a team of VECTOR researchers and teachers to co-create education materials.
René Booysen
VECTOR COORDINATION TEAM MEMBER
René helps with the coordination of VECTOR and ensure that the project runs smoothly.
Rose Clarke
IMPACT PROJECT OFFICER, QUALITY CONTROL
Rose is a geologist working in sustainability and knowledge exchange. Within VECTOR she brings experience of mining companies, academia, and NGOs to help guide impact.
Virginia del Río Orduña
ESG RESEARCHER
Virgina works in ATClave (southern Spain) to contribute to the integration of social and environmental challenges in mining
Max Frenzel
SUPERVISOR OF MINERALOGY TO MINERAL CHEMISTRY RESEARCH
Max oversees the collection of quantitative mineralogy and mineral chemistry data to evaluate their use in exploration, and calibrate the hyperspectral drill-core-scans.
Yonghwi Kim
GEOSCIENCE POSTDOC
Yonghwi researches the mineral and chemical makeup of rocks using high precision analytical techniques, including: electron microscopy, X-Ray diffraction and laser ablation.
Fergus McAuliffe
COMMUNICATIONS AND ENGAGEMENT MANAGER - ICRAG
Fergus is involved in the management of WP3, specifically in the creation of curriculum-facing educational resources for second level teachers, and in the creation of informal public engagement tools on critical raw materials in the European context.
Francesco Putzolu
GEOSCIENCE POSTDOC
Francesco is a post-doc researcher at the Natural History Museum studying the mineralogical and geochemical footprint of Li-rich volcano-sedimentary systems.
Miguel de la Varga
GEOSCIENTIFIC TOOL DEVELOPMENT
Development of novel numerical methods for data integration using probabilistic inversions in geological models.
Tina Pereira
PROJECT MANAGER IN THE VECTOR COORDINATION TEAM
Tina, a geoscientist by training, helps to facilitate constant communication between partners and to keep track of the project to ensure the success of VECTOR.
Christian Haberland
GEOSCIENCE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Conceptual design and coordination of passive seismic survey, instrumentation, field work, data analysis, interpretation.
Sarah A. Gleeson
GEOSCIENCE PARAMETERS AND CASE STUDIES WORK PACKAGE LEAD
Overall leadership and integration of the geoscience activities in Vector and ensuring the successful completion of deliverables
Richard Gloaguen
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR OF VECTOR AND INTEGRATION WRK PACKAGE LEAD
Richard ensures that the consortium is performing and complies with EU requirements
Sarah Gordon
IMPACT WORK PACKAGE LEAD
As CEO and co-founder of Satarla sustainability and risk management, and co-founder of Responsible Raw Materials, Sarah is responsible for the delivery of the impact work package for VECTOR.
Murray Hitzman
GEOSCIENCE LEGACY DATA REVIEW LEAD
Helping to lead the Case Study Data Review in WP2 of VECTOR to pull together and synthesize data concerning mineral systems in the Irish orefield and in the Kupferschiefer.
Mark P. Holdstock
PROJECT MANAGER
Company liaison (Group Eleven Resources Limited) assisting with the design and implementation of work to collect varied geoscientific datasets to help develop geological models that guide exploration.
Joe Magnall
GEOSCIENCE POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER
Joe is an economic geologist and will be investigating the mineralogy and lithogeochemistry of drill-core samples from the Irish Ore Field and German Kupferschiefer.
Adrian Kleine
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Adrian will ensure that the produced geological simulator is capable of the processes needed to simulate the different mineral systems of case study areas.
Conor Moynihan
EXPLORATION GEOLOGIST, MANAGER - TECK
Accountable for Teck’s discovery and foundational activities in Ireland.
Philip Rieger
GEOSCIENCE POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER
Applying 3D geological modelling to legacy data from study sites in Ireland and Germany to provide context for new data collection and further constrain the sites’ mineral systems.
Simon Virgo
GEOSCIENTIFIC TOOL DEVELOPMENT
Geoscientific Data integration, XR Interface Development.
Emily Lewis
IMPACT PROJECT OFFICER; SECRETARY - ETHICS MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
Emily has a background in law, ESG and impact, and is responsible for integration between WP5 and WP3 and assisting with ethical matters on the VECTOR project.
Patrick Nadoll
SENIOR ADVISOR
Focusing on stakeholder engagement, raw materials business intelligence and innovative solutions for exploration and the mining sector – acting as an interface between the mining industry, government and academia.
Oliver Ritter
CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR OF GEOSCIENCE MAGNETOTELLURICS
Site characterization - use of electromagnetic geophysical methods to determine the electrical conductivity structure of the subsurface.
Ramón Rodríguez Franco
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGIST
Member of ATClave team (southern Spain) contributing to to the integration of social and environmental challenges in mining.
Jon Russill
PRINCIPAL EXPLORATION GEOLOGIST
Jon works for SRK Exploration, an independent consultancy for the exploration industry. In WP3, he aims to develop a more human-centred business case for mining.
Trond Ryberg
GEOSCIENCE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Conceptual design and coordination of passive seismic survey, instrumentation, field work, data management & analysis, interpretation, Postdoc supervision.
Kevin Byrne
ORE BODY KNOWLEDGE
Create, enhance and sustain value at Teck’s base metal operations and advanced projects through the application of Ore Body Knowledge
Cathryn MacCallum
POST DOCTORAL RESEARCHER
Cathryn is a social scientist and Director of Sazani Associates, working across work packages 3 and 4 to develop a range of innovations to support critical thinking and informed decision making within the mining sector in Europe.
Daniel Palmowski
GEOSCIENTIST
Daniel is involved in the development of dynamic mineral systems models for case study areas and works hand-in-hand with data interpreters and static model developers to create the needed hypotheses of mineral systems.
Annette Scheunpflug
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Annette Scheunpflug holds a chair on Foundation of Education at the Otto-Friedrich-University of Bamberg. Her research focuses on quality in education, global education for sustainability and pedagogical anthropology. She is editor of two journals in educational sciences and has written more than 500 publications.
Juan Requejo Liberal
PLANNING CONSULTANT
Juan brings his experience as a planning consultant to VECTOR. He has directed more than 50 territorial development, mining, energy, industry, tourism and environment plans.
Chris Stockey
IMPACT PROJECT OFFICER, PROJECT MANAGER
As an earth scientist bringing his experience in science communication to the project, Chris manages the external communications of VECTOR in the Impact work package at Satarla.
Geertje Schuitema
SOCIAL SCIENCE LEAD
Geertje is an Associate Professor in the School of Business at University College, and leader of Work Package 3 on the Social Acceptance of Critical Raw Materials.
Sam Thiele
GEOSCIENCE POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER
Sam is a structural geologist and data scientist who works with hyperspectral drillcore and outcrop data to derive 3-D geological models.
Kristina Tietze
GEOSCIENCE PROJECT SCIENTIST
Magnetotelluric characterisation of the underground.
Kacie Wellington
SENIOR PROJECT GEOLOGIST
Kacie is the Teck representative based in Mullingar, Ireland; providing technical and logistical support for VECTOR
Rosie Carroll
SOCIAL SCIENCE POSTDOC
Rosie is exploring the social science impact of VECTOR, through formal education routes, focusing on Irish teacher training programs.
Thomas Hantschel
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
In modelling Thomas will oversee the physics and chemistry of the rocks, fluids and rock-fluid interactions together with the definition and calibration of the related properties. He is also responsible for the execution of computer simulation cases as well as the post-processing of the results.
Adrià Hernández-Pineda
LAB TECHNICIAN
Adrià is a physicist and I will be working in the petrophysical characterisation and 3D modelling of the target sites using ML methods.
Mark Proctor
POST DOCTORAL RESEARCHER
Mark works within work package 3, a Director of Sazani Associates, focusing on the anatomy of conflict around mining issues within Europe and how this influences values and notions of shared value in the EU’s mining sector.
Blas Urioste
COUNTRY MANAGER KSL
Country Manager in Charge of the KSL Kupferschiefer Lausitz Projekt.
Ute Weckmann
HEAD OF MAGNETOLLURGICS RESEARCH
Ute researches electromagnetic induction in the Earth to reconstruct modern tectonic systems and how they have changed through time to infer how mineral systems have been produced.
The partnership
VECTOR is made up of a broad range of partners. These represent the spectrum of stakeholders in the project. Every partner plays a critical role in ensuring that the project represents as many views and perspectives as possible, when assessing the challenges of extracting critical raw materials responsibly and sustainably for the green transition.
Social Vectors
Geoscience Vectors
Impact Creation
contact@vectorproject.eu
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement nº 101058483.
Co-funded by the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Co-funded by UK Research and Innovation. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of UK Research and Innovation. Neither UK Research and Innovation nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.