Founded on January 9, 1969.
Its basic research areas are:
- geochemistry of rock- and ore-forming processes;
- regional and genetic mineralogy and mineral physics;
- petrology of endogenous processes;
- geology of mineral deposits in Ukraine, their metallogeny and forecasting;
- exploration and environment geochemistry.
Main research achievements and developments:
- Scientists of the Institute validated age boundaries in the Precambrian era, which has become the basis for the chrono-stratigraphic chart of the Early Precambrian of the Ukrainian Shield and for periodization of metallogenic epochs in the early Earth history.
- Institute's specialists have upgraded luminescence-spectroscopic and nuclear-resonance methods for investigating the composition and electron structure of impurities and structural defects in minerals, they refined spectral methods of studying the content of a wide range of chemical elements.
- Patterns have been found in the formation of paramagnetic defects in mineral structures.
- The possibility of the presence of diamondiferous deposits in Ukraine has been analyzed.
- Geochemical methods of exploring mineral deposits, which rely on mobile forms of chemical elements, have been developed and introduced to prospecting practice.
- One of the novel rends in geology is biomineralogy. Its main achievements involve the development of new approaches to the studies of bone demineralization in zero-gravity conditions. New physical models have been developed to describe those processes at the level of hydroxyl-apatite nano-crystals. This will allow the development of countermeasures aiming at the inhibition of bones demineralization during space flights.