Yasushi
Watanabe was born and raised in Kyoto, and subsequently attended Hokkaido University, from which
he received a B.Sc. degree in geology in 1982. He studied sedimentary and deformational processes in a Miocene strike-slip basin in central Hokkaido for his thesis. He then joined the Geological Survey of Japan (GSJ) as a permanent scientist in 1985, working in the Hokkaido Branch of GSJ in Sapporo until 1992. During this period, he was engaged in a metallogenic study of epithermal deposits in Hokkaido with Junkichi Yajima and Eijun Ohta, as well as geological, stratigraphic and structural studies that led to compilation of 1:200,000 and 1:500,000 geological maps and 1:500,000 mineral resources maps of Hokkaido. He received the Research Encouragement Prize in 1992 from the Society of Resource Geology for papers regarding Neogene metallogeny of southwest Hokkaido.
In 1992, Watanabe moved to Tsukuba, the head office of GSJ, to join the Department of Mineral Resources after a year of administration work in the Research Planning Office. He completed his metallogenic study in the southwestern Kuril arc, for which he was awarded the Ph.D. degree from Hokkaido University in 1996 under the supervision of Shunso Ishihara. He extended his interest from the epithermal to porphyry and plutonic environments in order to understand the complete range of magmatic-hydrothemal systems. He and his colleagues; Jeffrey Hedenquist and Yukihiro Matsuhisa, worked on a cooperative project from 1996 to 1998 between the Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile and Metal Mining Agency of Japan (MMAJ) on the El Salvador porphyry Cu deposit.
Following the reorganization of GSJ in 2001, he has worked in the Institute for Geo-Resources and
Environment (IGRE), AIST, one of the institutes formed from the previous GSJ, and from 2003 he has been leader
of the Mineral Resources Research Group. Since 2001 he has investigated the genetic relation between the Toyoha Ag-In-Pb-Zn vein deposit and the nearby Muine calc-alkaline andesite volcano in northern Japan. He is presently working on the project "Study
of Hydrothermal Deposits and Metallogeny in Western Turkey" (2002-2005) with geologists of the General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration of Turkey.
Watanabe was, or has been a member of editorial boards of the Society of Resource Geology, Geological Society of Japan, and Association for Geological Collaboration in Japan. He contributed to several MMAJ grass-roots exploration projects in Japan, and also served as a scientific advisory board member of this Agency. He has been seconded as a lecturer
and/or technical expert to several Japan International Cooperation Agency projects related to the evaluation of mineral
potential. These have included technology-transfer projects in Honduras (1991-1994), Mongolia (1997-1999), Vietnam (2000), Morocco (2000-2001), Mauritania (2002-2006), and Argentina (2003). He was awarded as the 2004 Regional Vice President Lecturer of the Society of Economic Geologists. He has been serving as the Regional Vice President (Asia) for the Society of Economic Geolosits since May 2004 and an editorial board member of Economic Geology since January 2005.
