The team

Liz Thompson, PhD

Liz founded Transition Elements in 2019 after 20 years in the oil industry. Formerly an explorationist on the Norwegian continental shelf, she came to see the exciting possibilities in the accelerating transition. Aware of the timelines and risks involved in resource exploration, her earlier experience in designing, testing and using geological software for oil industry technology firms generated a vision for similar innovation in mineral exploration.

The need to develop less intrusive, more sustainable resource projects is a priority for her and for Transition Elements.

Liz holds a Ph.D. in structural geology from Imperial College

Austin Bingham

Austin is a co-founder of Transition Elements and has worked for more than two decades building software intensive systems in a variety of scientific and engineering domains. His experience includes developing sonar systems for the US Navy, compilers for National Instrument's LabVIEW, industry-leading oil reservoir modeling software, and a variety of telecommunications projects. He's an experienced teacher, the co-author of several books on software, and an active member of the open-source community.

Austin co-founded the software consultancy Sixty North, and he holds a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Robert Smallshire, PhD

A co-founder of Transition Elements, Rob has worked specifically in geocomputing, and more broadly in scientific and enterprise computing for over twenty years. With experience designing and writing software in the resource and energy sectors for structural geology (oil, gas, coal, metals), reservoir modelling, energy management (demand-response telemetry), solar irradiance monitoring software and hardware, software for designing industrial chemical processing systems, and video production systems. He is co-author of three books on software development.

An enthusiastic supporter of the shift to clean energy sources, he is very much aware of the demands this places on metals exploration and extraction to supply future generations and storage needs.

Rob founded the successful software consultancy, Sixty North, and holds a Ph.D. in structural geology from the University of Leeds, UK.

Tim Buddin, PhD

As our North American associate, Tim brings immense experience in geological modelling, project management, resource exploration and geological software development. He has worked with majors, such as bp, and juniors, with exploration teams and technology teams. An expert structural geologist, Tim can analyse the basin and build the geological model at the correct resolution to capture the system behaviour. A career in geo-modelling allows him to understand the use, advantages and limitations of geomodelling and design the right model for the task in hand.

Tim owns the successful geological consultancy Redwing Geoscience LLC, based in Colorado. Tim has been involved in both oil and gas and C.C.S projects and we are delighted to have him bring his skills as an associate of Transition Elements to help us tackle the needs of the energy transition.