Lecturers bios

Krister Sundblad defended his PhD degree at Stockholm University in 1981 on a VMS ore deposit in the Swedish Caledonides. After being engaged by the Geological Survey of Sweden from 1974, he was an exploration geologist in Latin America in 1983 as well as a professor and associate professor in mineral resources at five universities in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia from 1987 to 2022. His first visit to the Arbavere drill core storage took place in April 1990.

Tiit Kaasik is the Head of the Mineral Resources Department at the Estonian Geological Survey. He obtained a Master’s degree in Environmental Technology with a specialisation in Geotechnology from the University of Tartu in 2008. For nearly 20 years, he has worked in the public sector in various positions related to mineral resources and, among other responsibilities, coordinated the preparation of Estonia´s mineral resources policy document, General principles of Earth’s crust policy until 2050.

Matīss Brants is a PhD student in University of Latvia, specializing in magnetic field studies. He is researching the magnetic anomalies correlated with the iron ores in the Precambrian basement of Central Latvia. He also has industry experience working with UAV-based magnetic surveying and data interpretation from around the world employing various leading geophysics software packages.

Laurynas Šiliauskas defended his PhD thesis in 2019 (Vilnius University) on the Varena Iron Ore deposit in southern Lithuania. In 2022-2023, he held a postdoctoral position at Silesia University, working on age constraints for diamictites from South Africa and Namibia. For the past three years, Laurynas has been working as a senior researcher at the Nature Research Centre in Lithuania, focusing on the evolution of the southern part of the Lithuanian crystalline basement.