Barcelona SGA-SEG Student Chapter’s 6th workshop

The Barcelona SGA-SEG Student Chapter’s 6th workshop took place last 30^th of November and 2^nd of December, and it counted with the assistance of members from three other international Student Chapters: from Morocco, Freiburg and Greece. The topic of this year’s workshop was PGE / PGM in the oceanic paleolithosphere, an interesting topic due to the fact that platinum group minerals (PGMs) are nowadays listed as critical raw materials based on their economic importance and supply risk. Several experienced specialists on the topic gave talks about the geochemistry of PGE, their mineralogy and petrogenesis, the technics used to analyse them, and insights on PGE experimental mineralogy.

The workshop started the 30^th of November with an introductory class to PGE, PGM and PGE deposits, at the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona. The lesson was divided into a theoretical part, given by PhD student and president of the Barcelona SGA-SEG Student Chapter Júlia Farré de Pablo, and a practical part where Dr Cristina Villanova de Benavent, PhD student Lidia Butjosa and Dr Thomas Aiglsperger showed some hand samples from PGE deposits around the world (e.g. Bushveld Complex, Sudbury, Kambalda, Río Santiago). The lesson was very interactive and was considered very positive by the students.

The conferences were held at the Museu Blau building of the Natural History Museum, in Barcelona, the 2^nd of December. Six high-quality talks were given by invited speakers from Granada and Madrid (Spain), Freiburg (Germany), Prague (Czech Republic) and Luleå (Sweden). The talks were followed by scientific discussion generated from the questions made by the audience. We would like to give our most sincere thanks to Dr José María González Jiménez, Professor Fernando Gervilla, Dr Rubén Piña, Dr Malte Junge, Dr Thomas Aiglsperger and Dr Anna Vymazalová for their contribution to our event.

The workshop was completed with a fieldtrip to Bou Azzer (Morocco) in collaboration with the Morocco SGA Student Chapter.

More photos in the seccion Gallery