Ben Coughlin

Ben Coughlin was born in Brisbane, Australia and spent his early childhood living in Peru and Spain before returning to Australia. He completed a Bachelor’s degree in Economics at the University of Queensland before later pursuing his interest in geology, undertaking a Graduate Diploma in Exploration Geology at Curtin University where he graduated with first class distinction.

Following his studies, Ben began working in mineral exploration with a focus on copper and gold and has gained field experience across a range of geological environments. He has worked on exploration projects in Nicaragua, Argentina, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Colombia, contributing to target generation, reconnaissance, project evaluation and the integration of geophysical and geochemical datasets to support drilling programs. Through this work he has gained experience exploring for a variety of mineral systems including polymetallic skarns, porphyry Cu–Au, epithermal Au, intrusion-related Au and orogenic gold deposits.

Ben later completed a Master’s degree in Geophysics at the University of Aberdeen where he specialised in the application of geophysical methods to mineral exploration and graduated as valedictorian. His interests lie in the integration of geology and geophysics to improve exploration targeting and the development of new geophysical approaches for detecting mineral systems beneath cover. Ben has experience in acquiring and processing a wide range of geophysical datasets including multispectral and hyperspectral remote sensing, X-ray fluorescence, radiometrics, magnetics, transient electromagnetics, electrical resistivity tomography/induced polarisation, ground-penetrating radar and seismic methods.