Shaun Barker is Director of the Mineral Deposit Research Unit (MDRU) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia. He graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Geology from the University of Otago, and a PhD in Earth Sciences from The Australian National University. Following postdoctoral research at MDRU, he held academic positions at the University of Waikato and the University of Tasmania, including work with the Centre for Ore Deposits and Earth Sciences (CODES).
Since returning to MDRU in 2020, he has led major industry-supported research programs across Canada and internationally. These projects have emphasized porphyry copper systems, carbonate-hosted deposits, and ore body knowledge.
His research spans a wide range of ore deposit types, with a focus on mineral system footprints, mineral chemistry, and the development of practical exploration tools.
Brett Davis: Firstly, thanks for giving Coring the opportunity to interview you, Shaun. I openly admit to stalking your career summary on professional media. Let me first ask what got you interested in a career in geology?
Shaun Barker: I don’t really remember all that well. From an early age I was set on being a pilot, but in my mid-teens was convinced by a science teacher to pursue science (which I always enjoyed). We had a family friend who worked in the oil and gas industry (who was very well paid), and I’d always enjoyed dinosaurs and fossils as a kid. So, in my first year of university I thought I wanted to do either geology or chemistry (which was my favorite ‘mainstream’ science subject at school) and did five courses (two geology, three chemistry in first year, out of seven total courses). I was invited to the Honors stream in both subjects at the end of first year, but when the chemists told me that I would have to do organic chemistry (which wasn’t my favorite) to be a chemist, and geology had no such requirements (not that organic chemistry isn’t useful in geology), it was mostly geology for the rest of my Hons degree. I took almost all the papers (except, ironically, paleontology, as most of the paleontology in first year involved drawing fossils and I couldn’t see the point with digital cameras). It was ‘hard rock’ the rest of the way.
Brett Davis: Were there any genuinely formative moments in your early career and/or people who truly inspired you?
Shaun Barker: I was lucky enough to be at the University of Otago when, in my view, it was well at its peak with a range of amazing faculty, each with varying technical and philosophical strengths. Notable in my mind are Dave Craw’s pragmatic lessons as an undergrad, including his patient supervision of my third-year geology field-mapping project, and my first exposure to the mining industry: a tour of Macraes Gold Mine and the old gold mine workings in the Otago Schist during a field trip in third year.
As a first year, my very first lecture in geology was from Rick Sibson, which, as anyone lucky enough to be lectured by him knows, was a type of performance art. In this case, it was led off by Rick dropping a large rock on the floor of the wooden lecture theater in geology. I was on Rick’s bus for my first field trip to North Otago; he led us through with a series of terrible puns and singing.
I was also lucky enough to work with Rick for my Hons project where I focused on understanding the controls and timing of pseudotachylyte in a shear zone near Alexandra (Central Otago, New Zealand). When reviewing your work, Rick would always read it aloud, red pen in hand with you sitting next to him. If you made it through without having the chapter handed back before he finished reading, then you knew it was in good shape. I credit Rick with a strong grounding in scientific writing and some particular phrasings that he loved (or hated), as well as with thinking about the linkages between field observation and theory as they relate to structural geology and earthquakes.
Otago had a firm focus on field-based training and field mapping. Most courses had at least two weekend field trips, held no matter what the weather was, unless roads were closed by snow. Although I don’t map much now, that hands-on training was an incredibly strong foundation for a career in geology.
Brett Davis: You did your undergraduate degree in New Zealand. Do you ever get back to that part of the world for work or pleasure?
Shaun Barker: Not as much as I’d like, especially with Covid closing borders at the start of my time back in Canada. I do get back periodically to see family, and we just recently ran a fantastic field trip to the Coromandel Peninsula to view epithermal gold deposits, and to the Taupo Volcanic Zone to see hydrothermal fluid flow in real time! MDRU has recently joined a new, large research project on critical minerals led by Professor Julie Rowland at the University of Auckland. This will be a five-year collaborative project involving MDRU along with various New Zealand-based researchers.
Brett Davis: You are the currently the director of the highly respected Mineral Deposit Research Unit at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Does this position give you much time to do research? If so, what are your current research interests, and do you have students working on projects with you?
Shaun Barker: Yes. My primary role is research, now mostly research leadership and project creation, as well as supervision of a team of postdoctoral researchers (currently 15) and graduate students (currently about 20, mostly MSc students with a few pursuing a PhD). My research interests are varied and broad, but if I am trying to summarize, they would be across four main themes.
Developing a stronger genetic understanding of controls on the formation of large high-grade copper and gold deposits: I’ve worked on a variety of deposit styles including epithermal gold-silver, Carlin-type gold deposits, porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum deposits, carbonate-hosted deposits (CRD/skarn), IOCG, and sediment-hosted copper, and I remain fascinated by the question of what series of triggers in the various systems leads to high-grade, large deposits vs small or low-grade systems… How can we be predictive?
Mineral system footprints: How can we recognize the signatures of world-class ore bodies from as far away as possible and then vector towards them? I was lucky enough to work with Greg Dipple as one of my postdoc supervisors at UBC. We applied extensively reactive-transport theory to develop vectoring tools based on mineralogy, geochemistry, and isotopic tracers. I continue to use those lessons and approaches today, and we have been particularly successful in applying these to carbonate-hosted ore deposits. Despite their reputation for having ‘cryptic’ footprints, they are huge and readily recognizable once you know what to look for.
Ore body knowledge: a bit of a ‘catch all’ phrase; anyone working on ore deposits is, of course, developing ore body knowledge. What I mean is understanding how geology impacts the mining value chain. How is value created, or destroyed, by a better knowledge of geology and mineralogy? I have a fantastic team of postdocs and students doing some important work on this at the moment. We’ll have some excellent papers and contributions coming out soon, I hope!
Technology: I have always been a bit of a technology geek, so I am interested in how technologies will enable us to be better geologists. Sometimes this can seem like tinkering or playing with toys, but every so often you see what I consider transformative technologies. We’ve done work in new stable isotope technologies applied to carbonate-hosted ore deposits, the first paper on the use of nanoSIMS to image the distribution of gold in fine-grained arsenian pyrite in Carlin-type gold deposits, applying pXRF to geothermal logging (which was traditionally done primarily through visual logging of chips), etc. Most recently, we’ve been working with a new Zeiss slide scanning system which, in my view, completely changes how the industry can use and apply petrographic observations (arguably geology’s oldest technology after the geology hammer and measuring tape). So, I have a bit of a thing for thinking about how technology will impact geologists ‘now’, or in the future… And perhaps trying to call BS on technologies that don’t look likely to help us.
Brett Davis: In 2013 you were awarded the Waldemar Lindgren Award, which is offered annually to a young scientist whose published research represents an outstanding contribution to economic geology. Can you provide some details on this prestigious award?
Shaun Barker: The Waldemar Lindgren Award is awarded by the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG). Before I started my postdoc, I really had very little exposure to economic geology. My earliest ‘formal’ research in ore deposits was in the enigmatic Carlin-type gold deposits of Nevada where deposit footprints are hard to distinguish, especially visually. So, we developed new exploration tools (based around emerging new stable isotope analytical technology) to determine the isotopic footprint of these systems, which led to the first large-scale stable isotope ‘mapping’ of carbonate-hosted deposits. This is an approach that we still use today and which has been adopted by a number of companies exploring for carbonate-hosted deposits. That research, as well as our paper on application of nanoSIMS, were cited as examples of applying novel approaches to develop new understanding at different scales of ore deposits. They were the main basis for the award.
Brett Davis: One of the key aspects of your work seems to be interfacing with industry. What are the critical elements of marrying a research-oriented institution with the pragmatic requirements of the mining and exploration industry?
Shaun Barker: As far as I am aware, MDRU has a truly unique model for a research group related to the minerals industry. MDRU is an entirely industry-funded research organization. We draw our operating budget primarily through our membership scheme and training offerings, with a modest endowment from industry. Being hosted inside the University of British Columbia makes this a true partnership between industry (which funds us) and academia (which provides us with a home and significant in-kind support).
For research initiatives, we draw funding from our industry partners, which are required to maintain MDRU membership for the duration of the research. We also seek further support from the truly world-class industry co-funding schemes in Canada, primarily the Mitacs and the NSERC Alliance systems. These are focused on providing support for training students and postdoctoral researchers (what Canada terms ‘HQP’, or highly qualified personnel).
To survive for over 35 years, MDRU has had to thread the needle of ensuring our operating budget is stable. This means delivering to industry what they are paying us to do—both research and innovation, as well as maintaining the training of graduate students, postdocs, and young industry professionals. At the same time, we must continue to deliver academic excellence and research productivity (scientific papers, research grants, etc.) to ensure that we are seen as valued academic partners at UBC. It is a challenging model, but when we get it right, it is immensely rewarding for all parties.
Brett Davis: Working in academia can be tough. There are the constant battles for research funding, the pressure to publish, juggling administration with teaching and research, etc. What are your secrets to time management and what makes you stay in the research world as opposed to pursuing a career in the mining and/or exploration industry?
Shaun Barker: My secret to time management is probably not much of a secret; knowing when you’ve done a good job on something (and having the confidence to call it) but not striving to be perfect, knowing when you’ve addressed the problem/question (without continuing to collect data), and learning how to say ‘No!’ to some things.
Academics are getting squeezed for time across most sectors. Generally, most universities are downsizing, but the amount of administration and service, including volunteer roles on editorial boards, peer review, etc., is increasing, especially with the continuing ‘publish or perish’ model of ‘more publications are better’—so more work and fewer people.
I’ve stayed in academia because across the roles that I’ve been in, you can clearly see the impact your research and training can have in aiding discovery and leading to better industry outcomes. That’s a huge incentive. Academia also offers a significant upside with the freedom to pivot and aim to impact where you can. I’ve had the opportunity to travel and see lots of different deposit styles around the world with various commodity types.
Brett Davis: Do you have a rock collection? If so, what are the favorite items in there and why? If not, why not—geologists without rock collections are hard to trust!
Shaun Barker: I do have a decent rock collection (both at home and at work) of mostly curiosities, and it is not particularly organized! Favorite items: fossils are always a great thing, even if not in my professional wheelhouse, and especially when they remind you of places and people as well. A favorite is a crocodile? ankle? bone that my son and I found a couple of years ago. On the ‘professional’ front, it is hard to beat a couple of porphyry copper-gold samples—the paragenesis you can see in some of the quartz-magnetite-chalcopyrite veins, and overprinting vein textures allow you to unpick a whole story just from textures and mineralogy. It is amazing how much of a geological history you can extract from a single rock sample!
Brett Davis: What is your favorite dinosaur and why?
Shaun Barker: I’ll take two. I’ve seen some spectacular T-Rex skeletons at several museums around the world—always hard to beat. However, I always liked ankylosaurus as a kid. Something about having a large weight at the end of your tail you could whack things with was appealing!
Brett Davis: Is there a particular mineralization style or deposit type that interests you, and why?
Shaun Barker: I cut my teeth on Carlin-type gold deposits, and they are still interesting as there remain so many unknowns. I consider them to be relatively understudied considering the size and quality of the Nevada deposits, with discoveries continuing to be made. For example, the new Four Mile discovery has much higher reported grades than classic Carlin-type gold deposits; so why is that? Are they truly amagmatic as some suggest, or is there a strong magmatic influence that’s closer than we perhaps think?
Similarly, some unanswered questions remain in sediment-hosted copper, which I have worked on in one research project. What makes a ‘good’ vs an unproductive basin or sub-basin and why and how can we recognize that? In general, I am interested in most hydrothermal ore deposit types—while we have good working models for most deposits, there are enough exceptions to most to keep stimulating the ‘why’ question. And if you can address the ‘why’, then the applied outcomes are immediately obvious—if we understand drivers for grade or tonnage, then we can start being predictive.
Brett Davis: Do you undertake much work internationally, either as contract work or in a research capacity? If so, do you collaborate with other researchers or do it alone?
Shaun Barker: MDRU has a long history of research all over the world and we currently have projects in Canada, Ecuador, Greece, the US, and New Zealand. We are generally very collaborative, both within UBC and more broadly, and particularly within Canada, which makes sharing NSERC funding possible. We also often collaborate ‘in country’ where we can. For example, MDRU has run multiple research projects in Colombia, and in each one either the Colombian Geological Survey and/or local universities were involved in the research.
Brett Davis: You deliver popular and highly respected technical courses through MDRU. What fundamental skills are you helping to develop, and where do you see some of the basics being underdone, either in undergraduate teaching or within exploration and mining companies?
Shaun Barker: In our courses, we are often blending a mixture of very traditional skills (hand specimen mineral identification and paragenetic histories, petrographic work, field observations) with cutting edge tools and other data, such as micro-X-ray fluorescence, portable XRF, shortwave infrared or satellite imagery. We almost always look for industry or some type of hands-on experience with our incoming students, particularly those we are looking to put into field sites working with mineral exploration or mining companies.
Given our broad mix of incoming students, we see variable skills and skill gaps. Field mapping and observation skills, structural geology basics, and mineralogy are always core skills we value, and these are often quite variable depending on student backgrounds. We want our students to have those skills and improve them and then also add to that the more advanced technologies and data that they will encounter in industry.
You can’t effectively use lithogeochemical data unless you understand the basics of the geology and the mineralogy you are trying to predict from it. So, a big thing we try to teach our students is to use all the things you have available. How do your observations from the drill core or outcrop in front of you mesh with the more advanced datasets you might have, such as lithogeochemistry or SWIR core sensing data? Those data should send you BACK to the rocks, and the rocks should send you to the data (or encourage data collection) to check and test hypotheses. I always try to encourage our students to be constantly hypothesis testing—you should always have one or more models of ideas you are testing or trying to disprove.
Brett Davis: What is the most maddeningly common and frustrating thing that you have encountered when trying to get a research project up and running?
Shaun Barker: University and company legal bureaucracy is normally the biggest challenge. All the technical people are aligned, and then the lawyers get involved and spend several months arguing over IP terms that aren’t ever likely to be invoked!
Brett Davis: Has there been any single satisfying moment in your career that rates above all the others?
Shaun Barker: Seeing student success is always amazing—sending a student off with an idea or a concept and watching them go out and absolutely crush that idea and take it further is incredibly satisfying. A couple of examples stand out: Ben Andrews completed a PhD with me at Mount Isa. He revisited the oxygen isotope work that Chris Waring in an earlier PhD and Keith Hannan undertook and did a fantastic job of both validating their work and advancing it using new isotopic tools and 3D modeling. Then he went to work at Mount Isa Mines for several years and got his hands on 4-acid lithogeochemical data the company was collecting. The data highlighted previously unrecognized cryptic potassic alteration outboard of the main silica-dolomite visible alteration. Ben was able to put together a complete alteration footprint and exploration model (based on reaction-transport theory) using stable isotopes and lithogeochemical mineralogy proxies—his model is broadly applicable to any carbonate-hosted deposit environment! That work is published in his PhD thesis and is currently in peer-review.
The second example that stands out is a very recent study from Carolina Marín Suárez (who completed her MSc at MDRU) where she has sought to map out data flows across the entire mining value chain, with a particular focus on where data collected in mineral exploration and resource definition is used ‘downstream’ in mine design and operations. Whenever Carolina presents her work (which started off as a whiteboard concept in February 2024) to industry collaborators, it leads to significant interest and has elicited comments from major producers which include, and I’m paraphrasing: ‘We tried to do this and failed, can we please have a copy’, or ‘We want that, please—we need it’, and ‘This work from Carolina is f****** fantastic!’. That sort of visceral response to a piece of research, particularly one led by a student, is incredibly satisfying.
Brett Davis: Have there been any incidents that really disappointed you and affected your career, e.g. loss of funding for a project, interaction with recalcitrant people/companies, global pandemics, etc.?
Shaun Barker: Nothing specific, I’ve been lucky so far, I guess! Covid was certainly challenging for everyone but it was really amazing to me how the university sector pivoted so quickly to deliver high-quality virtual training. This illustrates just how much of a better job we can do using modern technology to communicate concepts to a broad global audience, including those without the financial resources to get to in-person training in the West.
There are always people in both academia and industry who ‘don’t get it’ and aren’t afraid to tell you so—whether they don’t understand why we need mining and mining-related research in universities, or those within the industry who don’t get why ‘we are paying all this money for research from a bunch of pointy-headed people that we’ll never use’. Generally, the way to deal with them is a mixture of trying to explain why we do need mining, and how our research could impact them, with a focus on the training value proposition. If that doesn’t work, then just try to ignore them and keep working with those who appreciate what we do!
Brett Davis: What has stressed you most in the roles you’ve had over the course of your career? Dealing with people? Technical challenges? Financial constraints? Physical relocation? Travel? Other?
Shaun Barker: Dealing with people can certainly be challenging, particularly in academia where there can be large egos, an embedded power structure, and often significant politics being played. Dealing with a rapidly changing industry is also challenging; people who are key supporters in a company one day are working for a different company a week later!
Certainly a few technical failures along the way where ideas or technologies don’t work. The best approach is to just be honest and explain why the failure occurred and what we could have foreseen, if it is worthwhile going again and what we could do differently. I’ve also certainly moved around a bit. I’m very grateful to have a supportive family who mostly get why we’ve moved and then why I disappear on a regular basis.
Brett Davis: What is your favorite scientific paper and why?
Shaun Barker: The seminal ‘Fault valve’ paper published in Geology in 1988 by Rick Sibson, François Robert, and Howard Poulsen is probably my favorite. A classic Sibson paper with an extremely important deposit type (orogenic gold). It integrated field observations, theory of fault, earthquake behavior, and hydrothermal fluid flow, all summarized in five pages. Truly a remarkable paper which is heavily cited and continues to be a useful model.
Brett Davis: This is a standard question of mine, because it never fails to elicit interesting and important answers. If you have abundant financial funding, is there a fundamentally annoying question or problem you’d like to solve or a topic you’d like to work on?
Shaun Barker: Oh, yes. There are several, all related to the same fundamental thing: developing a better understanding of how fluids migrate through magmas and host rocks. How is it that we can form a massive sulfide or layer of skarn mineralization, yet limestone just a few centimeters from the boundary looks essentially untouched? What combination of permeability and fluid-rock reaction enables that to occur? And in porphyry systems, what controls whether the fluids remain mostly trapped in the magmas or escape out into the country rocks? Is that a magma property or a host rock property, and what role does it play in controlling porphyry copper grades?
Brett Davis: What is your opinion about people and companies ‘giving back’ to the industry, e.g. in terms of mentorship? Do you think we see enough of it?
Shaun Barker: I think this is a tough one. When most people are ‘giving back’, they are in many cases giving up their ‘free’ time (and for many consultants paid work opportunities) to contribute—but then still have to complete their day job after hours. For other people, they are giving up family time or time when they could be relaxing, which is important in an increasingly fast-paced world. I see many people contributing a lot and volunteering, be it for organizations like SEG (someone like Bill Chavez comes to mind, who appears to be constantly running amazing student field trips), or someone like David Rhys giving talks to student chapters or for MDRU.
Personally, I think many in the industry do see this is important, but I’d also like to see the individuals who give up their time and money receiving recognition. I’d like to see industry more broadly recognizing how important this is and helping people create time to give back. Some companies are good at it, but I think the industry can do more. It’s amazing to see some companies racking up huge profits but then being unable to support staff attending professional development opportunities, or traveling to give talks to students, etc. All in the interests of reducing costs.
However, almost all companies are amazingly supportive of practical activities within the geosciences, such as enabling field and mine visits, providing funding both directly to universities and to organizations like SEG. That support is increasingly important, particularly at a time when we have a reduction in general geology training as well as increasing costs for students.
Brett Davis: Now to a personal question. What does Shaun Barker do when he isn’t thinking about rocks (does this ever happen)?
Shaun Barker: I have a set of golf clubs that I don’t get to very often, but when I do that one good shot per round makes you want to come back next time. More commonly, a fair chunk of my thinking time and energy is directed toward food (and coffee)—cooking it and eating it! As with my research, I like applying ‘emerging’ technologies to cooking and using scientific approaches (thinking about heat transfer and chemistry) to understand what makes food taste better. I have both a sous vide machine (ironically made by a company that used to make temperature-controlled baths for laboratories and then recognized a far more lucrative opportunity in the home equipment sector) and an ice cream machine that I enjoy playing around with. The chocolate ice cream I make is pretty spectacular, probably because of the amount of molten chocolate involved!
Brett Davis: Finally, any concluding comments or words of wisdom from a geology veteran?
Shaun Barker: In my opinion, geology is at a fascinating tipping point. We are now at a time when sensor-based data collection (handheld analytical instruments, core sensing systems, drones, satellites, aircraft, etc.) is becoming ubiquitous. I consider this geology’s ‘DNA’ moment. Just as biologists moved from being a largely descriptive science prior to molecular biology and the discovery of DNA, I believe that geology will go through a fundamental change where the ability of sensors to quantify and place probabilities around what geologists have largely been describing with words (e.g. grain size, rock types, and trying to identify minerals accurately and consistently) will fundamentally change how geology is done. Geologists will move from data collectors to data interpreters—and will be more important than ever! Both industry and academia are convinced that data science and AI are the future. Undoubtedly, they are part of the future. At the same time, basic geology and geological understanding, skills, and knowledge will remain as relevant as ever, if not more relevant.
For more information: Get in touch with Shaun on LinkedIn
