A CSM reunion in Penryn

Despite being a little jet-lagged after my return from Perth, Barbara and I attended a very enjoyable and interesting Camborne School of Mines reunion yesterday at the Tremough Campus in Penryn, a short drive from Falmouth.

Our annual CSM reunions are organised by ex-CSM librarian Linda Shimmield, who now lives in Adelaide, but regularly comes over to her beloved Cornwall to visit friends and family.

We toured the very impressive CSM facilities at Tremough, part of the University of Exeter, and I was particularly impressed by the SEM facilities, including a modern QEM-SCAN, used mainly for research and teaching, producing students eminently trained in modern process mineralogy.

Gavyn Rollinson (2nd left) explains
the SEM services

We were shown around this section by Dr. Gavyn Rollinson,  whose enthusiasm for his subject had impressed me when we first met in Brisbane 3 years ago at Automated Mineralogy '08. These impressive SEM facilities are the results of the endeavours of ex-CSM Director Prof. Keith Atkinson, and Dr. Alan Butcher, former geology lecturer at CSM, who emigrated to Australia to work with QEM-SEM at CSIRO, then on to Intellection, who marketed QEM-SEM and QEM-SCAN, in strong competion with the JKTech's Mineral Analyser (MLA). After the demise of Intellection, Alan moved to FEI, and is now ironically involved with marketing both QEM-SCAN and MLA. He regularly visits Cornwall to advise on QEM-SCAN operation.

It was a great reunion, and I also thank Andy Wetherelt, head of mining engineering at CSM for arranging the tour.