Michel Nzikou Mamboukou

Michel Nzikou Mamboukou is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET) within the School of Earth and Oceans at The University of Western Australia, a position held since August 2022. His work integrates geophysics and geology to advance exploration targeting methodologies through computational modeling and open-source software development.

Education:

• MSc in Nanomaterial, University of Cape Town, South Africa
• MSc in Computational Geodynamics, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
• PhD in Exploration Geophysics, Curtin University, Western Australia (2015 onwards)

His research focuses on developing innovative 3D geological modeling approaches, bridging geological and geophysical data for subsurface interpretation, and applying Large Language Models to geoscience challenges. Current projects optimize exploration targeting via QGIS-based Loop3D framework enhancements and GeoBot—a Gemma2B-powered chatbot for geoscience student assessment.

His 2025 publication in Scientific Reports demonstrates expertise in computational techniques for geophysical feature discovery, aligning with Earth Science, Computer Science, and Geophysics disciplines through advanced methods like t-SNE and satellite imagery analysis.

Scientific Awards:

• AGC travel grant for Science Meet Parliament (Canberra, February 11-13, 2025)
• Google's KaggleX Fellow'24 (August 28, 2024 - December 15, 2024)

Dr. Mamboukou actively teaches software carpentry with the Kaya-HPC server team and coordinates CET's weekly Brown Bag talks. He previously served as ASEG WA Branch President (2022-2024) and Secretary (2021-2022), demonstrating strong community engagement. His UN Sustainable Development Goal contributions focus on environmental resource management.

He operates within CET's collaborative environment, leveraging open-source tools for geological uncertainty assessment while pioneering LLM applications in geoscience education and exploration workflows.