Anson Gilbert is a chemical engineer, currently Business Development Manager – Separation at FLSmidth based in Perth, Western Australia. He has operational mine experience, reaching the level of operations manager and has spent the last 6 years at FLSmidth working in separation. He has worked on projects in several commodities and his current interest and responsibility is Reflux Technology. He has had extensive involvement in testing, piloting, engineering and commissioning of Reflux Technology and has also worked on a number of successful projects where clients have leveraged FLSmidth technology to improve sustainability.

Josh is currently a Post Doc with the ANSTO Minerals groups at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, working on the focus of this talk as part of the "By-Product Potential of Australia" project, led by Geoscience Australia which is one of the projects currently being undertaken by the Australian Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub, a government funded program bringing together expertise from the Australia’s leading research institutes; ANSTO, CSIRO and Geoscience Australia.

My Ph.D. focus on improving the flotation of fine valuable lithium minerals through the formation of small hydrophobic flocs. I began my academic journey at the Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne, where I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Science in 2019 and a Master’s degree in Chemistry in 2022. I played an integral role at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science from 2019 to 2022. Within this capacity, I immersed myself in research on mechanical control of fluorescence in conjugated polymers and nanoparticle synthesis, and I explored Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) substrates, particularly for their application in point-of-care analyte sensing. As a significant part of my master's program, I spent a year at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing, China. I joined the Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC) and the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Melbourne for my PhD. Now at the FBICRC, my focus is sharply on the domain of mineral processing. Specifically, I am pioneering methods aimed at improving the flotation of fine valuable lithium minerals.

Lev Filippov is Full Professor at the National Engineering School of Geology of the University of Lorraine (Nancy, France). With over 40 years of research experience in mineral processing he authored more than 250 peers reviewed and conference papers and 25 patent applications. The main research areas cover the fundamental and applied researches on the surface chemistry and modelling of flotation process to recover the strategic metals from primary and secondary resources.

Luisa D'Andrea is a geoscientist with extensive experience in geophysics and geology for exploration and mining. A former Principal Geoscientist for Rio Tinto, she now works with Datarock, talking with customers about machine learning applications to solving geoscience business problems. Since 2020, Luisa has been driving innovation in geological and geotechnical solutions through advanced computer vision technology for the exploration and mining industries.

Marika Tiihonen is working as Technology Manager of lithium technologies in Hydrometallurgy Business Line for Metso, Finland. She has M.Sc in Chemical Engineering from Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. She has more than 20 years’ background in hydrometallurgy. Her background is in R&D and process engineering. In her current role as a Technology Manager since 2018, she has responsibilities to coordinate process engineering discipline in engineering and delivery projects, sales & marketing support, flowsheet development, R&D and IP. She holds several patents and applications in the field of hydrometallurgy.