About VEXRAD

VEXRAD is an Edinburgh deep-technology company built to carry forward one of the most original ideas in modern geoscience: Atomic Dielectric Resonance (ADR) — a way to read the composition of the ground from the surface, without drilling.

Why VEXRAD exists

VEXRAD exists to commercialise ADR first as a subsurface decision-support technology that reduces uncertainty before expensive drilling – not as a wholesale replacement for established geophysics.

ADR does something conventional geophysics cannot: it characterises what lies beneath a site — lithology, fluids, structure, proxy temperature — before a single metre is drilled. VEXRAD was founded to take that invention forward: to keep developing it, to prove it against hard data, and to put it to work on the challenges of the energy transition. We are a lean, founder-led company built around deep technical expertise and a clear commercial focus — helping geothermal developers and minerals explorers make better decisions before they drill.

True surface-based, pre-drill “virtual borehole” classifiers of geology — systems that produce depth-converted lithology or material logs from the surface without any physical borehole — are uncommon. ADR (VEXRAD) is one of the few that explicitly markets this capability.

If the requirement is a surface-acquired, pre-drill, depth-converted material/lithology classifier at a specific location, ADR (and any closely related microwave-beam systems) currently occupy a this much-needed niche. Other geophysical methods can provide complementary structural, resistivity, or attribute information that helps rank and position targets, but they generally do not deliver the same style of “virtual borehole” product.

Fewer blind drill holes. Better targets. Better capital allocation. Lower exploration risk.

The inventor — Dr G. Colin Stove (1949–2026)

ADR was the life’s work of Dr G. Colin Stove, VEXRAD’s founding inventor. Born on a croft in Shetland and trained as a geographer and physicist at the University of Aberdeen — where he was mentored by the wartime scientific-intelligence pioneer Professor R. V. Jones — Colin spent his career learning to see into places others couldn’t. From early remote-sensing research to ground-penetrating radar, he pursued one question with unusual persistence: could a signal be made to travel deep through solid rock and return carrying the composition of everything it passed through? In ADR, he answered it.

Over more than thirty years he developed ADR from principle to field practice, and saw it deployed on every continent — including Antarctica and inside the Arctic Circle. He was named inventor on the ADR patents and lead author of the Typecasting, CalcDataMix and Sequencing (SEQL) methodologies that underpin our interpretation today. Those who worked with him remember a scientist who trusted the measurement over the theory, explained the complex simply, and treated everyone around him with generosity.

Colin co-founded VEXRAD with his son Gordon so that his invention would continue beyond him. Carrying that work forward — with the same rigour, and the same honesty about what the data can and cannot show — is the purpose of this company.

The team today

VEXRAD’s science and delivery are led by people who worked directly with the technology from the inside. Gordon Stove, Co-founder & CEO, co-authored the CalcDataMix methodology and has directed ADR programmes across geothermal, mining and site-characterisation projects internationally. Dr Kees van den Doel, Scientific Lead, co-authored the CalcDataMix and signal-reflection methods and continues to develop ADR’s analytical core.

Edinburgh, Scotland

We are based in Edinburgh, within a strong and growing deep-technology community — a natural home for work that spans European geothermal programmes and international critical minerals and energy transition exploration.

James Clerk Maxwell, the father of electromagnetism, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 13, 1831. His birthplace, 14 India Street, is now home to the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation, which kindly supported ADR’s early stage developments from 2000-2002.

We are a small company with large ambitions and no tolerance for padding: every project gets the direct attention of the people who know the technology best. We regard that as an advantage.

Why VEXRAD?

Decades of technical continuity

VEXRAD carries forward decades of ADR research, technology development and international field experience. The people leading VEXRAD today have worked directly with the technology, its development and its application to real subsurface problems.

Evidence before claims

We believe subsurface technology should be judged against ground truth. That is why VEXRAD distinguishes between

Validated, Grounded, Candidate and Known Null evidence and publishes case studies where ADR interpretations can be compared with independent drilling, geological or other project data.

Complementary, not a replacement for drilling

ADR is designed to help improve decisions before expensive intrusive investigation. Virtual Boreholes can provide another layer of evidence for target ranking, geological interpretation and survey planning, but they do not replace drilling, assays, physical sampling, well testing or appropriate conventional geophysics.

Direct access to the technical team

VEXRAD is deliberately lean. Projects receive direct involvement from the people who understand ADR, its processing and its limitations. That allows us to assess projects quickly and to say when we believe ADR is — or is not — an appropriate tool for the problem.

Start with the decision, not the technology

We do not believe every subsurface problem needs ADR. Our starting point is the decision a client needs to make, the evidence already available and whether additional subsurface intelligence could materially reduce uncertainty.

Bring us one target. We’ll tell you whether we think ADR can add useful evidence before you drill.

“Before you spend millions drilling, use ADR to reduce the uncertainty about where and what to drill” Gordon Stove, Co-founder & CEO.

See beneath the surface.

Decide with evidence.

Drill with confidence.