TMVC Leads Skills Workshops

TMVC personnel have taken the lead in boosting the skills of students in a series of workshops aimed at introducing key software packages and techniques.

The Skills Workshops Program has been running since July, with a session running for approximately a half to a full day every 1-2 weeks. While the workshops were developed to assist Honours level students, they have also been available for attendance by Masters and PhD level students.

While the program is not quite finished for the year, the sessions and content have been well received by students, with the program scheduled to return in 2017, with expansion planned for sessions on XRD and LA-ICPMS.

Skills Workshop Program Line-up

• ioGas - presented by TMVC post-doc Dr Mike Baker
  • Importing data
  • Constructing and using diagrams
  • Interrogating geochemical data
• UTAS Central Science Laboratory (CSL) analytical capabilities seminar
  • Dr Christian Dietz: isotope analysis
  • Dr Thomas Rodemann: IR and Raman spectroscopy
  • Dr Sandrin Feig: SEM and electron microprobe analysis
• ArcGIS - presented by TMVC PhD candidate Cassady Harraden
  • What is GIS, and how do we use it?
  • ArcGIS software basics + practical excercises
  • Using ArcGIS for data analysis and interrogation + practical exercises
• Orange - presented by TMVC post-doc Dr Matthew Cracknell
  • Introduction to machine learning
  • Supervised classification (practical)
  • Uncertainty
  • Uncertainty and unsupervised clustering (practical)
• The Spectral Geologist (TSG) - presented by TMVC post-doc Dr Lejun Zhang
  • Theory of SWIR
  • Using the TerraSpec
  • Collecting spectra
  • Identifying minerals using TSG
• Adobe package - presented by Dr Nathan Fox
  • Introduction to Adobe platforms
  • Figure drawing and drafting with Adobe Illustrator
  • Figure drafting and theis design using Adobe Illustrator and InDesign
• Leapfrog - to be presented by presented by TMVC post-doc Dr Evan Orovan
  • Introduction to Leapfrog
  • Plotting geochemical data in 3D
• Presentation skills - to be presented by TMVC post-doc Dr Anita Parbhakar-Fox (Skill Workshops Program co-ordinator)
  • Introduction to MS Powerpoint
  • Presentation techniques (practical)

from left to right, top to bottom: Cassady Harraden assisting students in the ArcGIS workshop; Lejun Zhang covering the fundamentals of TSG; Matthew Cracknell explaining the use of the Orange data mining tool; students experimenting with data in Orange