The Frank Arnott-Next Generation Explorers Award (NGEA™) Committee is delighted to announce Rio Tinto will be a Gold Sponsor for the inaugural Frank Arnott - Next Generation Explorers Award (NGEA™). This award is focused exclusively on bringing together the education and mineral resource sectors to address key industry challenges around the use and interpretation of exploration-relevant data. The Frank Arnott – Next Generation Explorers Award (NGEA™) challenge will provide a means for geoscience students to “bridge the real-world skills gap” by working collaboratively on an unstructured problem that will hone both their university-acquired and collaborative group skillsets on relevant applications used in the mineral exploration industry.
Rio Tinto head of Exploration, Dave Andrews, said:
“Rio Tinto is proud to sponsor the Frank Arnott - Next Generation Explorers Award and support explorers of tomorrow gain the necessary skills to unlock the future minerals and materials essential to human progress.
“The award pays homage to Frank Arnott, a true pioneer and an extraordinary geophysicist who worked in our business and revolutionized how we work today, taking inspiration from media software and applying it to the way we now integrate and visualize data to identify our new growth discoveries. It is wonderful to see Frank’s legacy live on through this award.”
This challenge is open to students who are currently enrolled in either an undergraduate or post-graduate Earth Science degree. Students will have the opportunity to collaborate within multi-disciplinary groups, gain hands-on experience working with modern data sets encountered in real-world employment scenarios and improve their leadership and team-based skills. Participants will have the chance to grow their professional networks, meet with potential employers and receive feedback and recognition by those in the mineral exploration industry. The finalist presentations and awards ceremony for the Frank Arnott - Next Generation Explorers Award (NGEA™) will take place during the PDAC convention in March 2021.
“We’re excited to have the support of Rio Tinto in advancing the Frank Arnott - Next Generation Explorers Award,” says Marc Gasparotto, Vice-President of the Next Generation Explorers Award Association.
“Both our organizations share a similar vision in fostering students’ technical skills and awakening collaborative abilities that are invaluable in the mineral exploration industry.”
Rio Tinto is a leading global mining group that focuses on finding, mining and processing the Earth's mineral resources.
The Next Generation Explorers Award Association is a non-profit organisation made up of volunteers that is committed to supporting our future generation of explorers through collaborative and industry-specific events like the Frank Arnott - Next Generation Explorers Award (NGEA™). For further information on sponsorship or participating, please visit our website at
www.frankarnottaward.com.