His name was Jack Sauers. I just did a search and found his name linked to his paper that he did called “Geophysical Gold Forecasting”. (Global cold climates linked to higher gold prices). He died perhaps 12 to 15 years ago, and lived in Seattle. I think it was some university in Sweden that he worked with, and then the seed vault was also in Sweden. It sounded like it was a seed vault for seeds from all around the world in case of an apocalypse so future generations would have something to work with.
A quick search shows that the vault is in Norway. But Uppsala University in Sweden does a lot of seed research and stores their stuff at the vault in Norway. It may have been Uppsala University that he was working with.