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.

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.

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.

Brendan has been with the development and design of ground support for underground mining applications since 2002. He has extensive experience in the development, testing and implementation of new ground support technologies for various mining methods, with the majority of his experience in hard rock mining. Brendan’s recent interests have been focused on support for dynamic and other challenging ground conditions.