Murray W. Hitzman is Director of iCRAG and a Science Foundation Ireland Research Professor. Murray has B.A. degrees in geology and anthropology from Dartmouth College (1976), an M.S. in geology from University of Washington (1978), and a Ph.D. in geology from Stanford University (1983). He worked in the petroleum and minerals industries from 1976 to 1993 primarily doing mineral exploration worldwide and was largely responsible for Chevron Corporationʼs Lisheen Zn- Pb-Ag deposit discovery in Ireland (1990). Dr. Hitzman served in Washington, D.C. as a policy analyst in both the U.S. Senate for Senator Joseph Lieberman (1993-94) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (1994-96). In 1996 he was named the Fogarty Professor in Economic Geology at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) and served as head of the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering from 2002-07.
His research in economic geology at CSM was focused on the Central African Copperbelt. In 2016 he joined the U.S. Geological Survey as the Associate Director for Energy and Minerals and served until late December 2017. He served as the President of the Society of Economic Geologists in 2006. He has previously served on the boards of a number of junior mineral exploration and mining companies.
He was awarded the SEG Silver Medal in 1999, the Daniel C. Jackling Award by Society of Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration and the Des Pretorius Award by the Geological Society of South Africa in 2015, and the Haddon Forrester King Medal by the Australian Academy of Sciences in 2016.