Serkan Saydam received his BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in Mining Engineering from the Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey and completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He then worked at De Beers for 3 years as a project manager in Johannesburg, South Africa. Serkan joined the School of Mining Engineering as a Senior Lecturer in 2006 and since 2017 he has been working as a professor. He is currently Chair in Mining Engineering at the School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering at UNSW. A key focus of his research is to address the current needs and future challenges faced by the minerals industry. These are generally very complex engineering problems, as mining environments become more extreme and constraints are imposed due to increasing social, environmental, and health and safety standards. His fields of research include space resources engineering, ground control, mine systems design, mine internet of things, and technology integration and management. He established research collaboration with NASA, ESA and Luxembourg Space Agency, as well as more than 40 research organisations and universities globally. He has more than 250 publications and graduated with 16 PhD students. Serkan attracted more than $15M research grants. Serkan is known for founding and chairing the AusIMM’s International Future Mining Conference Series, and co-chairs AusIMM’s AusRock Conference Series and Off-Earth Mining Forums. Professor Saydam is the High-Level Advisory Board Member of EU funded illuMINEation Project and the Advisory Board Member of 7Sisters Mission, the first Australian Mission for the Moon. Serkan is also the inventor of the Virtual Mine – ViMINE mining engineering game. Professor Saydam received multiple academic awards including the 2020 UNSW Dean’s Award for Global Impact, 2019 UNSW Vice Chancellor’s Postgraduate Research Supervision Award and 2017 Society of Mining Professors’ International Tim Shaw Innovation in Teaching Award. Serkan is currently a Fellow Member of the AusIMM; President of the ISRM Commission on Planetary Rock Mechanics; Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) at UNSW; Deputy Secretary-General and Council Member of the SOMP (The Society of Mining Professors).

Prof Ali Mortazavi received his B.Eng. in mining engineering from the Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran in 1990, M.Sc. in Rock Mechanics from McGill University, Canada in 1994, and Ph.D. in Rock Blasting form Queen’s University, Canada in 2000. He has supervised to completion of over 55 Master's and Ph.D. students and has published over 100 papers and reports in prestigious international journals and conferences. Dr. Mortazavi has over 20 years of experience in teaching, research, and managing industry projects in geomechanics design, applied and advanced numerical modeling, and petroleum engineering applications in Canada and Iran.

Mark graduated from The University of Queensland in 1982 with a Bachelor of Mining Engineering and during the 1980’s and 1990’s completed a Masters of Engineering Science in Rock Mechanics, while gaining geotechnical experience with various consultancy and research groups associated with the underground coal industry. Over the last 25 years Mark completed his PhD in Mining Engineering and has developed several geotechnical design techniques and software packages which are routinely and widely used by the Australian Collieries and are supplied via his company Geotechnical Software Services Pty Ltd.

Matthew is a geotechnical engineer with over 15 years operational experience. His experience covers both large scale open pit and underground mining operations in Nickel and Gold. Matthew has worked in a range of underground mining methods including sub-level caving, narrow vein and longhole open stoping in high stress and squeezing ground conditions.

Chunchen Wei received his BSc degree in Taiyuan University of Technology in 2013 and MSc degree in China University of Mining & Technology, Beijing in 2016. He is currently a final-year PhD student in University of New South Wales with a specialisation in rock mechanics, geotechnical engineering and numerical modelling. His research interests lie in coal burst mechanisms and control, longwall mining and ground control. Recently, his research interests also include numerical analysis of seismic events induced by fault-slip in longwall mining, quantification of energy changes for excavations in various geological and geotechnical conditions.