Medals and Awards

Crossing the academic-industry divide, Holly Stein provides expertise in ore geology and petroleum systems. At the center of her field-oriented approach is geologic time, essential to reconstructing resource-forming events. In the mid-1990s, Stein and the soft-money AIRIE Program she founded pioneered radiometric dating of molybdenite, pyrite, and arsenopyrite, applying the Re-Os isotope clock (An Introduction to Re-Os: What’s in it for the Mineral Industry?, SEG Newsletter, no. 32). Re-Os geochronology of petroleum systems followed, with AIRIE producing the first Re-Os age for a crude oil and using sulfides to date oil charges.

Holly is a Fulbright Scholar and has received the SEG Silver Medal (2005), the Helmholtz-Humboldt Research Prize (2008), the Bunsen Medal in Geochemistry from the European Geosciences Union (2020), and the Science and Innovation Award from Colorado State University (2022). She holds a B.S. degree from Western Illinois University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Holly holds a half-time appointment as a salaried research professor at the University of Oslo (Norway). As an unsalaried professor and senior research scientist at Colorado State University for 25 years, her AIRIE Program funded numerous graduate students, postdocs, and early-career scientists. In 2022, with a change in CSU-Geosciences’ mission, AIRIE took their entire laboratory setup and funding to Innosphere Ventures where they continue their academic-industry-government partnerships and mentoring of students.

Massimo Chiaradia received his M.Sc. degree in earth sciences at the University of Padova (Italy) and his Ph.D. degree in earth sciences at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). During his research career, carried out at various institutions in Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and U.K., Massimo has applied integrated geologic, mineralogical, petrological, geochemical, and isotopic tools to investigate different processes occurring in the atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere and in the Earth’s lithosphere. During the last 15 years he has developed a strong interest in understanding the interplay among geodynamics, petrogenesis of arc magmas, and the formation of porphyry-type deposits at convergent margins. To this purpose he has worked both in active and fossil magmatic systems from various arc environments, mostly in South America and in the Mediterranean region. Currently, he is senior lecturer and head of the isotope tracing laboratory at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Geneva (Switzerland).

Bertrand Rottier has been a professor at the Université Laval (Canada) since 2019. He holds geological engineering and M.Sc. degrees from the LaSalle Polytechnical Institute France (2012) and a Ph.D. from the University of Geneva, Switzerland (2017). His research mainly focuses on the physicochemical factors controlling the fertility of mineralized systems to improve the exploration efficiency for precious, base, and critical metals. In 2019, one of his publications was distinguished by the Best Paper Award of the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits.

Doug Kirwin is an Australian geologist with 50 years of international experience. He was executive vice president of Ivanhoe Mines from 1996 to 2012 and is currently an independent consulting geologist. Doug has an M.Sc. degree in mineral exploration from James Cook University and enjoys contributing to SEG student programs and field trips.

Federico Cernuschi is an independent consultant specializing in the geology and geochemistry of magmatic and hydrothermal processes, with a focus on porphyry deposits. He integrates classic hand-lens observations and Anaconda-style mapping with trace element geochemistry, spectroscopy, and other analytical techniques. Fede provides continued support to First Quantum Minerals and services to companies like Rio Tinto, Fortescue, and several juniors. In these roles, he has worked on exploration projects of varied geology and age across more than 20 countries and has provided training to multiple global exploration teams. His education includes the University of the Republic (UDELAR), Uruguay (B.S.), and Oregon State University, USA (M.S. and Ph.D.).