David is a Principal Geotechnical Engineer with over 25 years operations, research and consulting experience in the civil and mining industries. He was the Technical Lead for the Melbourne Metro CBD Station Caverns temporary works design analysis. He is the Founder of Geotechnica - a rock mechanics consulting firm.

Dr Player was trained in mining and geotechnical engineering and has 30 years of industrial and research experience. This covers a broad and applied knowledge base in areas of mine engineering (production and planning), mine design (method selection and layouts), geotechnical assessments (rock mass classification and variability in seismic and non-seismic environments) for mine excavations (entry and non-entry). John has worked as a site-based mining and geotechnical engineer, a researcher and as a consultant. He is the owner and Principal Engineer of the consulting company MineGeoTech – Engineering advice grounded in rigorous data analysis, enabling robust design.

Hao Zhai is a geotechnical engineer who completed both bachelor and PhD degrees from University of New South Wales. He started his industry adventure at Appin and Dendrobium, two underground coal mines at Southern Coalfield of NSW. At the moment, he is a geotechinical engineer at Cowal Gold Mine, NSW. In the research and practice career, he has developed proficiencies in rock mass downgrading, laboratory testing, statistical analysis and numerical simulations.

Dr Mohammad Vahab received his PhD in Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2015. He immediately joined UNSW as a research associate in Geotechnical Engineering, where he is currently employed as a lecturer. The focus of his research is numerical simulation by employing the state-of-the-art computational methods, namely: Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM); Non-differentiable Energy Minimisation using Discontinuous Galerkin Method (DG). Mohammad specializes in the hydro-mechanical coupling processes in saturated/unsaturated porous formations. This involves the development of physical models as well as advanced computational frameworks in relation to the hydraulic fracturing treatments in neat, fractured and/or layered domains.