CRC ORE Early Career Researcher - Tom Payten
CRC ORE early career researcher Tom Payten describes his work in mineral identification using upconversion fluorescence. Tom's research is helping to develop a mineral upconversion reference library with a focus on providing industry-achievable new methods to identify important mineral phases.
Tom Payten spent a decade as a process mineralogist in industry, helping to solve problems for a range of commodities across the mining cycle. In this time he gained expertise in automated mineralogical systems, and exposure to a wide range of mineral identification techniques. Tom completed a Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Nanotechnology in 2008, and honours in Physics in 2011. His honours project focused on sub-micron element mapping of minerals at the Australian Synchrotron to understand processing behaviour. Tom hopes to continue solving interesting problems in a range of situations well into the future.
CRC ORE is established and supported under the Cooperative Research Centres program, an Australian Government Initiative.