DSM Advisory Committee Appointments.

Business Editors

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2003

Desert Sun Mining Corp. (TSX VENTURE:DSM) recently setup a Technical Review Advisory Committee to the Board of Directors that will provide strategic and technical guidance to DSM during its continuing programs to explore and develop the extensive Jacobina gold property in Brazil.

Mr. Peter Bojtos P.Eng. is a member of the Board and will chair this committee which will consist of 5 members. The first two appointments to this committee are Dr. Richard Garnett and Dr. Charles H. Thorman.

Peter Bojtos is a Professional Engineer with over 30 years of worldwide experience in the mining industry. He has a strong background in corporate management as well as in all facets of the industry from exploration through the feasibility study stage to mine construction, operations and decommissioning.

Mr. Bojtos graduated from the University of Leicester, England in 1972, following which he worked at mines in West Africa, the United States and Canada. For 12 years he worked in Toronto for Kerr Addison Mines Limited, a Noranda Group company, in increasingly senior management and officer positions. From 1992 to 1993, Mr. Bojtos was the President and Chief Executive Officer of Consolidated Nevada Goldfields Corporation, which operated precious metal mines in the United States. From 1993 to 1995, he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Greenstone Resources Limited, a company that was constructing gold mines in Central America.

For the past 7 years Mr. Bojtos has been an independent director of several mining and exploration companies including Birim Goldfields Inc., Queenstake Resources Ltd., Vaaldiam Resources Ltd. and Asian Mineral Resources Ltd.

Over his career he has visited and evaluated properties in about 80 countries and has been involved with operations in about 30 of them. He has been instrumental in 17 significant corporate acquisitions, mergers or sales that involved 24 mines and he was the regional exploration manager at Kerr Addison at the time of the staking and subsequent discovery of what eventually became Inmet's Troilus gold-copper mine in Quebec. Mr. Bojtos has participated in the development, building or reopening of 19 mines and has had a hand in the operation of 24 producing mines.

Richard Garnett, Ph.D, has devoted more than 40 years to the international mining industry. In 1957 he obtained a BSc. in Mining Engineering, followed by a PhD. in Economic Geology, from the Royal School of Mines and Imperial College, University of London, England. His career took him first to South-East Asia, for part of the time as regional manager for RioTinto Zinc, interspersed with some years in Spain and Canada on exploration and a variety of base metal mining projects.

After obtaining an MBA degree, he spent many years in South Africa as a Division Manager and director of subsidiaries of the Anglo American Group. During that time he was occupied with exploration, project evaluation and management, corporate planning, and ore marketing. A wide range of commodities and of mineral deposit types was involved both throughout southern Africa and internationally. His work included the first financial evaluation and Brazilian tax interpretation for Anglo American's Jacobina project in the mid-1970's. In 1987 Dr. Garnett was appointed a Vice-President of Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting of Canada, and, subsequently, until 1991, Technical and Operations Director of Minorco's, gold oriented, operating joint venture in the U.S.A. For the past decade he has resided in Toronto providing consultancy services in the field of precious metals and diamonds, and holding directorships in several junior exploration and mining companies. As a director of Diamond Fields Resources he was responsible for that company's early recognition and exploration of the Voisey's Bay nickel deposit.

Charles Thorman, Ph.D, has more than 40 years of international geological experience, having worked extensively in Brazil, western and central United States, and Liberia. He is currently Executive Vice President for Exploration and a Board member of New Bullet Group, Inc., a Canadian junior resource company with properties in Brazil and Mexico. With 24 years in the Mineral Resources group of the U.S. Geological Survey, six years of university teaching, three years in the petroleum industry, and seven years in the minerals industry, Dr. Thorman brings a broad and varied perspective to Desert Sun Mining's Technical Review Committee.

His chief professional interest lies in regional and local tectonics and how they relate to the genesis of mineral deposits and mineral resource assessment. Since earning a B.Sc. (1958) from the University of Redlands and an M.Sc. (1960) and Ph.D. (1962) from the University of Washington, Dr. Thorman has had a wide exposure to mineral deposits. He began his career in 1962 as a structural geologist with Humble Oil in the Basin-and-Range Province of the western United States and in southern Oklahoma where he worked on large-scale thrust belts and major wrench fault systems. Following six years of university teaching, he joined the U.S. Geological Survey and served in the Mineral Resources group from 1971 to 1995 as a research scientist and for five years as Chief, Branch of Central Mineral Resources. During his USGS tenure, Dr. Thorman worked in Liberia, Brazil, and the central and western U.S. mapping in and around mining districts to determine the regional tectonic setting and genesis of deposits. He has published more than 100 articles on the geology of these regions. While living in Brazil from 1972 to 1974, he was part of a USGS minerals team working with the Ministry of Mines and Energy teaching and organizing courses for Brazilian government earth scientists and working with various agencies on national mineral and mapping programs. In 1986, 1992, and 1995, he organized and led IUGS/UNESCO Deposit Modelling Workshops in Brazil focused on the country's major gold deposits. Recent publications include collaboration with the Brazilian Geological Survey on their 1995 "Geologic Map of Brazil," co-editor of the USGS/MME 1999 CD-Rom "The Mineral Economy of Brazil," and senior author of "Major Brazilian Gold Deposits - 1982 to 1999" in Mineralium Deposita, 2001. He co-hosted a Symposium on Brazilian Mining in Salvador, Brazil in 1995 and organized a 1997 SME "Gold Exploration & Geology of Brazil" short course. Since retiring from the USGS in 1995, Dr. Thorman has consulted for various mining companies in Brazil.

A further two appointments to the Technical Review Advisory Committee will be announced in the near future.

Desert Sun Mining is a Canadian gold exploration and development company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange. (www.desertsunmining.com).

The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.