Nick Barber Co-Authors Journal Article The assistant professor of earth and environmental geoscience and his fellow researchers explored trace elements in lateritic bauxite.

By Lily Caldwell
November 9, 2026

Nick Barber, assistant professor of earth and environmental geoscience at Washington and Lee University, recently co-authored an article in Minerals Engineering, an international journal devoted to innovation and developments in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy. He wrote the paper alongside researchers from the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia and the University of Queensland in Australia.

The article, “From source rocks to critical elements: Vanadium, Gallium and Scandium enrichment in lateritic bauxite deposits of West Kalimantan and their recovery,” investigates trace elements and critical metals in lateritic bauxite, an aluminum-rich rock that forms through intensive tropical weathering, a process known as lateritization. The research team studied one of Indonesia’s largest bauxite deposits in West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.

Bauxite forms in hot and wet climates, where heavy rainfall slowly breaks down the rock below the surface. Over time, rainwater washes away some elements and leaves others behind in greater concentrations than in the original rock.

The researchers traced three metals (vanadium, gallium and scandium) from the underlying bedrock into the bauxite deposits, examining how their concentrations changed during weathering. They then tested whether those metals can be recovered by performing experiments using acid. The tests were successful, with the best results coming from bauxite that formed on gabbro, a rock that develops as magma cools deep underground. Their findings suggest that bauxite mined for aluminum could become a source of other valuable metals and present a means of identifying which deposits are most promising.

Barber has been a member of the W&L faculty since 2023. Prior to W&L, he was a Wares Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McGill University (Canada). Barber earned a Bachelor of Science in geoscience from Drexel University and a Ph.D. in earth sciences from the University of Cambridge (U.K.).

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