Dr Bell owns Stratamodel Inc. (www.stratamodel.com), a contract exploration service that specializes in uranium exploration. Dr Bell is an internationally recognized, exploration geologist with over 30 years of field experience in Niger, and many other countries in West, Central, and Southern Africa, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, and Canada.
Dr Bell previously served as a Senior Geologist with BHP, a Geologist with the US Geological Survey Branch of Uranium and Thorium, and a Research Geologist for ARCO Oil & Gas. Dr Bell received his PhD in Geology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1983. His dissertation topic dealt with basin wide and local scale uranium mineralization in the Jurassic Morrison Formation of New Mexico, the closest known analog to the uranium mineralization of Niger.
Dr. Kondratov graduated in 1963 from the Moscow State Univeristy with M.S. in mineralogy. Dr. Kondratov is accredited as a senior geological scientist by the Russian accreditation committee and has received the prestigious national award for his distinguished career in the exploration of natural resources from the Ministry of the Geological Resources of the Russian Federation. He has published over 200 papers on the field of geology and resource exploration. Dr. Kondratov has developed the Adsorbed Gas Geochemical methods that are now used in exploring for uranium, gold, oil and natural gas.
Igor N. Stepanov Ph.D. – Consulting Geologist
From 1954 to 1959 professor Stepanov has attended Moscow State University geophysics department while also working at the geological engineering labs. In 1964 received Ph. D. in geophysical sciences. He is the inventor of the Lito-Dynamic Assessment of mineral bearing areas that uses paleo-reconstruction of the zone of interest, later supplemented with satellite data analysis to create subsurface channel maps. Such maps, in conjunction with satellite imagery, help distinguish between authentic/geological and superfluous, including manmade, features, and help analyze attraction/focal points and geological features, which may serve as an indication of a mining opportunity. Dr. Stepanov was honored as the distinguished scientist of the USSR and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In 2005 Azize received a B-TECH (Bachelor of Technology) in Applied Geophysics, with Uranium Exploration as the thesis, from the Dept. of Applied Geophysics at the School of Mines and Earth Sciences of the Federal University of Technology, Nigeria. After graduating, he has worked at the Centre of Geological and Mining Research (C.R.G.M) at the Ministry of Mines and Energy of Niger. Azize also worked at SOMAÏR and COMINAK, Niger uranium producing companies operated by AREVA, in the department of uranium exploration and development (Section Geologies) where he had the opportunity to carry out Airborne Geophysical works with FUGRO as well as ground geophysical and geological works. Immediately prior to joining SLM, Azize was employed by Indo Energy Ltd du Niger, an Australian company conducting exploration in the same area as SLM.