Grant: Alliance Grants

Canada has a vast wealth of the minerals and materials that are needed to drive the modern economy. The goal of this project is to develop Canadian-made sensors, algorithms, and processes to further the exploration and development of Canada's critical minerals, thus growing Canada's economy. All of these technologies relate to Time-Domain Electromagnetic (TD-EM) surveys.This proposal brings together one of Canada's leading earth exploration companies, EarthEx, along with three researchers at the University of Manitoba's Electromagnetic Imaging Lab (EIL). EarthEx provides acquisition, analysis and inversion of geophsyical exploration data, and the EIL is a world-leader in the creation and industrial deployment of electromagnetic imaging systems, including hardware, software, and associated imaging algorithms. In particular, this project will focus on four techinical problems:- Design of new TD-EM hardware including transmission and receiver hardware - Signal processing improvements in TD-EM surveys - Machine-learning based parametric inversion to replace human-operator based inversion - Advances in general purpose inversion in TD-EM, including machine learning approaches. Each of these technical advances is a close fit between the expertise of the EIL and EarthEx, and will drive Canadian technology and knowledge in exploration for, and maximize exisiting mines of critical minerals, including mines for, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and copper.Through these projects, the EIL will train HQP, giving them in-demand industry skills in geophysical interpretation, electronics design and fabrication, algorithm development, signal processing, and inversion/imaging.