The Frank Arnott – Next Generation Explorers Award (NGEA™) is an international mining competition in which teams of geoscience students work with modern geoscience datasets and pitch their innovative interpretation of the geology and mineral exploration potential. The challenge, founded in honour of Frank Arnott (1951-2009), aims to build a sustainable supply of enthusiastic, skilled geoscientists that can steer the mineral industry going forward.

The NGEA™ is open to current undergraduate earth science degree or post-graduate research (masters or PhD) students enrolled at the time of registration. Teams are encouraged to be between three-to-eight members and be multi-disciplinary (including students from other fields of study such as engineers, data scientists, economists, social scientists, etc.).

Two to four members of the top six teams from around the world will receive an all expenses paid trip to the PDAC convention in Toronto, Canada where they’ll compete for cash prizes totaling $14,000!

Watch NGEA™ 2024 at PDAC

Enter the 2025 Challenge
NGEA 2

Career development, international recognition and cash prizes are but a few of the benefits to participants. The challenge offers students hands-on experience working with modern datasets encountered in the field, opportunities to improve their leadership and team-based skills, and the ability to expand their industry networks and increase potential employment opportunities.

All participating teams will receive feedback and recognition by members of the mineral exploration industry.

Datasets for interpretation
Students will be able to select from a set of provided regional high-quality datasets from around the globe.
Software
Educational versions of Geosoft’s Oasis montaj, Seequent’s Leapfrog Geo and Imdex’s ioGAS will be provided to registered teams for working with the selected dataset.
Eligibility
Each team must meet a minimum of two forms of “Team Diversity” for entry into the NGEA™. Diversity may be in the form of discipline/specialisation, gender, nationality, culture, etc. Teams that do not meet these criteria will not be eligible for the award.
Judging
Independent judges will evaluate the results using the Assessment Rubric (located under Resources - Submission Guidelines) which speak to innovation in data integration and visualisation, application of methodologies new to earth sciences, exploration significance of team findings and discernible evidence of collaboration within the team.
Prizes
Finalists will compete for the grand prize of CAN$5000 for the team with the highest judges’ score, and three prizes of CAN$3000 for the categories of: 1) Innovation, 2) Integration and 3) Impact & Exploration.

The judges will award these prizes based on participants’ scores for each category. Teams are eligible to win both the grand prize and a category prize, however they are not eligible to win more than one category prize.
Finalists
With the final contestants presenting at the PDAC 2025 Convention, the NGEA™ will contribute funds for the flight and accommodation costs to Toronto for two to four members of the finalist teams.
Pacha team
Grand Prize Winner
Pacha Team
Rumi team
Impact & Exploration Prize Winner
Rumi Team
Tethyan explorers
Data Integration Prize Winner
Tethyan Explorers
Rolling stones
Innovation Prize Winner
The Rolling Stones

Frank Arnott (1951–2009) was an exceptional exploration industry leader. He championed innovative techniques that maximised the value of the multidisciplinary data that underpin modern exploration campaigns. Frank always looked for new and innovative ways to improve data processing methodologies and integrate multidisciplinary exploration datasets. The development of his GeoExpress 2000 product was the culmination of many years of hard work. It is fair to say that Frank was at least a decade ahead of the industry in his thinking, with many of the concepts he was advancing coming to fruition today.

Frank was never constrained by convention and he was just as happy working on global datasets as he was working at the prospect scale. He was equally comfortable engaging with academia as he was with industry and often sought innovation in unfamiliar areas such as biomedical imaging, bringing back ideas to help solve exploration problems. His enthusiasm was infectious and he was a wonderful mentor, a talented scientist, always passionate and committed to geophysical exploration.

Fa at desk
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