Sela Akdag is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering of UNSW. He obtained his PhD from the School of Civil, Env & Mining Engineering at the University of Adelaide in 2019. Prior to joining UNSW, he worked as a postdoc focusing on rock/coal burst projects and in-situ stress measurement methods. His research interests focus on rock/coal burst analysis for deep mining activities, numerical modelling in underground mining, rock/fracture mechanics and ground support.

Matthew is R&D Manager for Jennmar Australia. He joined Jennmar in 2014 as an engineer, predominately focusing on research, development and implementation of new and existing ground support systems. Matthew hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil / Mining Engineering from the University of New South Wales and has recently commenced a PhD focussing on dynamic ground support.

David joined DSI in 1998 and through this time has worked in various engineering and technical management roles within the business – across manufacturing, product design and numerous ground support applications. David is currently DSI Underground’s Business Development and Strategic Projects Manager, facilitating key expansion initiatives and strategic partnerships for the Australian business unit. David is the Asia Pacific representative for DSI Underground’s global technical network and manages the Australian intellectual property portfolio. David holds a Degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales.

Bradley has been involved with the design, development and implementation of ground support product and test methods for Sandvik since 2011. He has worked primarily within hard rock mines to develop and improve ground support solutions, focusing on niche products and new test methods. He was part of the team to develop the first instrumented in-situ dynamic test apparatus with Sandvik in 2013, which has been utilised by 15 sites globally.

Osvaldo received his B.E. degree and MEng degree in civil engineering at the Marche Polytechnic University in Italy. In 2013, he moved to Australia to work as a researcher at the University of Sydney. In January 2018, he joined Sandvik’s bolting research & development team and he is currently involved in designing new products for mining applications.

Eugie has ten years of hard-rock mining industry experience including underground block caving, sublevel caving, room-and-pillar, sublevel open stoping, and open-pit projects, particularly in production, drill-and-blast and geomechanics coupled with mining research. Over the past three years, he has worked site-based roles as a geotechnical engineer and completed his PhD in developing a new constitutive model for numerical software to simulate the time-dependent behaviour of tunnels in squeezing ground. He has developed extensive knowledge of underground excavation systems and tunnel support design using empirical, analytical, and numerical methods.