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Keith Barron, PhD'97
Professional Achievement Award recipient 2010
Western opened up a world of possibilities for Keith Barron. “While at Western, I met so many graduate students and faculty with stories of work in odd corners of the world. I, too, was anxious to take a break from my studies and I chose to go to Australia in 1988,” Baron says. “Since then I have resided in more than a dozen countries and visited close to 80.”
Working in mineral exploration for more than 25 years, Baron has consulted for numerous companies and investment houses, with an expertise in epithermal gold deposits. The founder of two companies, Aurelian Resources Inc. and U3O8 Corp, he is currently working on a number of projects in Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana and Switzerland.
Baron hopes to reinvigorate the study and teaching of economic geology at Western. He pledged $1.2 million to the Faculty of Science to create the Robert W. Hodder Chair in Economic Geology and establish the Richard W. Hutchinson Visiting Industrial Professor in Economic Geology.
Norman Duke, Western Economic Geology associate professor, says Baron’s commitment to fundamental geology played the key role in his accomplishments. “He is also a living example of the old adage that education is the key to success,” Duke says.
