CMI early career researcher Carl Gorski, Colorado School of Mines, recently finished his bachelor’s degree in Geological Engineering. During undergrad, Carl worked with CMI and professor Erik Spiller on the Bear Lodge Project. Gorski will continue to work with CMI and professor Spiller while pursuing a masters in the Earth Resources Science Engineering (ERSE) at Mines.
During the CMI Meeting at Mines in April 2024, Carl’s presentation titled, “Exploiting Rare Earth Element Mineralization Via Preferential Breakage & Sortation: The Bear Lodge Project,” described the genesis of carbonatite deposits, as well as his recent work with industry partner Rare Element Resources to improve process efficiency. For this, he earned top oral presentation honors.
Gorski has experience in mining, mineral processing, and most fields of geoscience. As an undergraduate student, he held summer internships with Nevada Gold Mines near Battle Mountain, Nevada, and Rio Tinto Kennecott in Utah. He says the scale of work was different, with one processing about 40,000 tons of ore per day and the other 150,000 tons of ore per day. At both, he learned about the upstream and downstream processes of mining, and used his background in geology to improve ore processing.
In Nevada, he experimented with a process that made temperamental ore functionally inert. For this work, he was selected to present at the corporate office, and ranked highly among all of the company interns. In Utah, he was able to work with both surface operations and the new underground skarn project. Here, he compared different ore types, using his formal training in geology to infer how underground mineralogy would interact with process metallurgy.
It's this combination of both disciplines, namely geology and metallurgy, that he’s carrying forward into a master’s degree, as well as his new lifestyle. “I love the science of geology and the engineering of crushing ore,” Gorski says. He is getting married this summer, and looks forward to establishing a new school-work-life balance with a partner. As for what comes after graduate school, he’s continuing to explore options within the mining industry as well as other possibilities with a university or a national laboratory – opportunities that he knows are available due to his work with CMI.
June 2024