PRESS RELEASE: The company stated that this initiative is part of its commitment to the transfer of specialised knowledge. The comprehensive course is under the direction of Professor Clayton V Deutsch and will be held in conjunction with the Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile.

“The mining industry has entered a new era in which it wants to embrace new technologies,” said Marcelo Arancibia, South America vice-president at Maptek, when announcing the initiative this week. “To be ready for this challenge we need to seamlessly incorporate new competencies and protocols to guarantee competitive improvement. This is more relevant in the determination and characterisation of mineral deposits. Errors in the interpretation of basic data have caused many companies to obtain poor results in the exploitation of projects.”

Faced with this reality, geostatistics, a science that helps to model and estimate deposits, has transitioned from a discipline dominated by a few experts to a differential of skills spread among various professionals worldwide over the last 15 years.

The knowledge of the tools, theory and practice of geostatistics has been fundamental to this change, allowing the corresponding modelling to be carried out correctly, according to Arancibia.

He explained: “Maptek anticipates that geologists, mining engineers and metallurgical engineers, as well as any professional working in resource estimation, will be willing to take this opportunity to improve their skills in applying the robust tools they need to expand their professional practice. They will gain a solid technical foundation and graduate with high quality management and personal skills to reach executive positions and become leaders in their field.”

Entrepreneurial technology developer Maptek has a strong interest in disseminating knowledge, having trained more than 180 mining professionals in Resource Estimation through its Citation programme in Applied Geostatistics for 18 years, led by Dr Deutsch.

The new Masters course is oriented towards geoscientists and engineers with experience in geostatistics, and consists of 10 modules taught over two years by experts Dr Deutsch, Dr John Manchuk and Dr Ryan Barnett. Registrations for the inaugural Master in Geostatistical Modelling are now open.