Prof Ismet Canbulat is a mining engineer with over 30 years of experience in research, consultancy, management, on-site and academia. He has BSc, MSc and PhD degrees from Istanbul Technical University, University of the Witwatersrand and University of Pretoria respectively. In South Africa, he worked for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), where he was a Research Area Manager in Rock Engineering Programme. After 10 years in research he moved to consultancy and worked for Groundwork Consulting and later for Strata Engineering (currently Golder Associates) in Australia as a Principal Engineer. In 2008, Ismet joined Anglo American Coal in Brisbane, where he was the Group Geotechnical Engineer for underground operations until November 2014. He was responsible for leading the development of geotechnical engineering standards, procedures and the best practices, supporting operations in mine design and green field projects at concept, pre-feasibility and feasibility levels, providing technical support for business risk management, technical support for design and selection of mining equipment as well as implementation of new technologies and research findings at operations. Since 2014, Ismet is Professor, Head of School and Kenneth Finlay Chair of Rock Mechanics at the School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering, UNSW Sydney.

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).

Dr Charlie Li is a professor in rock mechanics for mining and civil engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway. His expertise is in stability assessment of underground spaces and ground control. He worked as a ground control engineer in a mine in Sweden for more than four years before his academic career at NTNU. His interests are rockbolting technology, ground support, dynamic ground support and rockburst. He published a book entitled “Rockbolting – Principles and Applications” in 2017. Professor Li is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences. He was the ISRM Vice President for Europe 2015-2019.

Alison currently holds the position of Director, Rocscience Australia overseeing operations in Australia and New Zealand. She obtained her PhD at UNSW and is a Chartered Professional (in Geotech) and RPEQ. Her area of expertise is rock mechanics and open pit slope stability, previously working in both ops and corporate roles for Anglo American and Rio Tinto as well as providing specialists consulting services for copper, gold, iron ore, coal and diamond operations in Australia, PNG, SE Asia and Africa.