For forty years, SCI has supported and recognised the excellence of early career scientists, by aiding their studies in the form of an SCI Scholarship.
Since 1985 more than 80 scholarships have been awarded which have not only given the recipients financial assistance, but have enabled them to broaden their network, and strengthen their skills and knowledge. SCI Scholars receive access to publishing and mentoring opportunities and are given a platform to present their work amongst esteemed scientists and industrialists, raising their profile within the scientific community.
We are delighted to announce that Paloma José Núñez Muñoz, from Imperial College London, has been awarded an SCI Scholarship of £5,000 over two years to support her PhD project.
In addition to the scholarship, Paloma will benefit from publishing opportunities, access to a high-calibre network to help launch her career, and opportunities to present her work and raise her profile within the scientific community.
SCI Scholarships are prestigious and well respected by the industry. The SCI Scholars Fund was established in 1920 by the requests of Rudolph Messel and John Gray, both former presidents and founding members of SCI. SCI believes in nurturing the scientists of the future. Each year, SCI provides scholarships and bursaries to early career scientists including opportunities to attend or present at an international conference.
I am an Metallurgical Engineer and hold a Master’s degree in Engineering Sciences with a specialisation in Industrial Engineering, both from the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH). My undergraduate thesis studied the thermo-fluid dynamic effects on mass transfer in a Peirce-Smith copper converter through computational simulation, and my Master’s research explored advanced multivariate analysis and latent variable methods for composite indicator development, with results presented at international conferences in Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina.
Before starting my PhD, I worked at CODELCO and AZA, gaining direct exposure to heap leaching operations, plant planning, and metallurgical data analysis. It was during this time that the questions driving my current research took shape. I saw two converging pressures building at once: groundwater was becoming increasingly scarce in regions where the hydrological resource is already severely limited, and the ore was shifting from oxidised copper minerals towards primary sulphides, particularly chalcopyrite, which conventional leaching routes struggle to treat. Declining ore grades made any transition to a flotation and pyrometallurgical route economically unfeasible for many operations. These challenges were affecting real decisions at the plant level, and the tension between what I was seeing in industry and what still needed to be understood is what drew me towards academia.
My PhD at Imperial College London, funded by Chile’s National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), is based in the Advanced Mineral Processing Research Group (AMPRG) at the Royal School of Mines, in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, London. Working across microbiology and mineral processing has been one of the most enriching aspects of the project. The research gap I am addressing exists precisely because these two fields have rarely been developed together in this context, and bringing them into dialogue is where the most practically relevant questions sit.
The research focuses on adapting microbial communities to operate in seawater for bioleaching of copper sulphide ores. In Chile, seawater is widely available and using it directly eliminates the need for costly desalination infrastructure while avoiding further pressure on already scarce groundwater reserves. The project also addresses the broader challenge of developing processes that remain viable as ore feeds shift continuously towards more refractory sulphides at declining copper grades. Preliminary results show that seawater-adapted consortia can maintain and, in some cases, improve copper recovery, while achieving more stable conditions that help avoid surface passivation over time.
Paloma José Núñez Muñoz
PhD student
Imperial College London
Visit Blog