About the Author
After completing a BSc.Hons. degree in Physics, Carina Lemmer obtained a Master’s degree in Computer Science. The most interesting and challenging computer work at the time was to be found with the large mining houses in Johannesburg. She started as a Systems Analyst at Rand Mines, a mining house known for its coal and gold mining enterprises.
There she became aware of the pioneering work done in ore evaluation by Prof. Danie Krige, whose name is linked to “kriging” in geostatistics. Carina thereafter took up a position at the erstwhile Gold Fields of South Africa where the work provided a broad scope of different mineral deposits to study and model.
While attending a workshop at Fontainebleau in France Carina met Prof. André Journel, who had just been appointed to the Applied Earth Sciences Department at Stanford University. This lucky circumstance and the generosity of Gold Fields led to sponsored PhD studies at Stanford University. Aside from the excellent graduate courses in Applied Earth Sciences, the requirement was also to take some undergraduate courses in Geology.
It was in a Geology course by Prof. Gordon Brown that Carina first learned about mantle plumes or “hotspots”, and it suddenly answered many questions. After twelve years at Gold Fields she resigned from her position as Assistant Manager of the Management Services Division to become an independent consultant to the mining industry.
Gold Fields was her first client and it afforded her a steep learning curve in all aspects of exploration target generation. Carina has now been an independent consultant for three decades, participating in and assisting mining companies with both target generation, as well as evaluating the results of the exploration of targets.
Her work on mantle plumes has become all-absorbing, and she is interested in expanding this work both within and beyond the borders of Southern Africa, including the rest of Africa and other continents.