Jake Alexander, Geoscientist and Alumnus

Economic Geologist

Jake Alexander (MS ’20) wrote his thesis on the relationship of deep- and shallow-water facies of the carbonate rocks in the Archean Transvaal Supergroup in South Africa. Alexander was active in both academics and industry during his time at UT. He interned at ExxonMobil in Houston working on the Permian Basin and served as the first alumni relations officer to the EPS Advisory Board. After defending his thesis, Alexander immediately headed to Reno, Nevada, and began work as a field geologist intern for Lithium Nevada, a subsidiary of Lithium Americas. His team focused on exploration for sedimentary-hosted lithium deposits across the Cordillera of the western US. “That internship was essentially a field course in physical volcanology, a crash-course in economic geology, and a great first taste of mineral exploration,” he said about the summer of 2020 at Lithium Nevada. “I was hooked.” In 2021, he relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah, and joined a consulting firm as a staff geologist. In that position, Alexander performed every step of exploration for minerals—from regional targeting to boots-on-the-ground geological investigations. With clients’ target commodities ranging from aggregate to gold to critical minerals, he learned to target mineral systems across diverse geological terranes. “Every day was a new challenge,” he said. “I was fortunate to spend almost two years in consulting and be exposed to many different mineral systems. To go from reviewing maps and literature to collecting data on the outcrop by sampling, mapping, and remote sensing methods was incredible.”