M Akbar RHAMDHANI is a Professor in Extractive Metallurgy and Metals Recycling at Swinburne University of Technology. He is currently the Director of Fluid and Process Dynamics (FPD) Group; and Program Leader of Net Zero Carbon Materials and Processes (Manufacturing Future Research Platform). Akbar obtained his PhD from McMaster University Canada in Materials Science and Engineering. Akbar's current research directions include: (1) Recycling and recovery of metals from urban resources (e.g. e-waste, end-of-life alkaline and lithium ion batteries, solar panel, permanent magnet); (2) Decarbonisation and Hydrogenation of metallurgical processes; (3) Pyrometallurgical processes of Rare Earth Elements (REE) minerals; (4) Solar metallurgy (the use of concentrated solar thermal energy for minerals and metals processing); and (5) Astro metallurgy (extra-terrestrial minerals and metals processing; e.g. metals extraction on Mars and Lunar). Akbar has been working conducting joint research, delivering courses and workshops with/to metals industries in Australia, Europe and Indonesia. Akbar and research teams have been awarded a number of international awards including from TMS, ASM International, AIST, and IOM3. Akbar is the Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy, TMS Springer Nature.

Dr Hidayat obtained Bachelor Degree in Mining Engineering with specialization in Metallurgical Engineering from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia in 2005. He then obtained his Masters Degree in 2008 and Doctoral Degree in 2013 from the University of Queensland, Australia both in Pyrometallurgical Engineering. He then worked as a Process Engineer for a ferro-manganese smelter development project in Indonesia. In the period 2014 to 2018, he worked as a Research Fellow at the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Center, The University of Queensland, Australia. During his time as a Research Fellow he was involved in various research projects and studies related to smelting copper, lead and other non-ferrous metals. Since 2019 until now he has worked as a lecturer in the Metallurgical Engineering Study Program at Institut Teknologi Bandung.

Dr Shenghao Li is a postdoc fellow of the State Key Laboratory of Refractories and Metallurgy and School of Materials and Metallurgy at Wuhan University of Science and Technology, and serves as reviewer for the Journal of the Australian Ceramic Society. He earned his doctoral degree in materials science at Wuhan University of Science and Technology in 2023. His research interests cover interaction between refractories and melts, visual in-situ characterization of the application and wear of refractories. He has published 10 academic papers and obtained 12 invention patents. He won the Excellent Presentation Award in the 3rd International Conference on Advanced Manufacturing and Materials, the Grand Prize of Oral Presentation in the 1st Postgraduates Seminar on Refractories.