Craig is a geologist with thirty years’ experience in the mining industry. During his career spent in mineral exploration, underground coal mining and resource geology, he has worked on exploration tenements and operating mines located across four continents. He joined BHP in 2019, where he currently holds the position of Principal Resource Modelling at BMA Planning Technical and Environment, based in Brisbane. In addition to fulfilling the role of resource Competent Person for Caval Ridge coal mine, Craig is working towards the application of geological uncertainty to optimise drilling programs and de-risk mine plans. A self-taught Python coder, he has dabbled in geostatistics long enough to finally take the plunge and start a Graduate Certificate in Geostatistics and Spatial Modelling at Charles Sturt University. He also holds an M.Sc. in Geology and a Graduate Certificate in Mining Engineering.

Dr. Ilnur Minniakhmetov is the Global Principal Geoscientist – Data & Numeric Modelling at BHP, based in Perth, Australia. With over 15 years of international experience, he specializes in geostatistics, stochastic simulation, uncertainty quantification, and the integration of machine learning in resource modeling. Ilnur leads BHP’s global Uncertainty Group, driving innovation in resource estimation and spatial data analysis across diverse assets. He is a strong advocate for the application of conditional simulations and rigorous uncertainty quantification to support risk-informed decision-making in mining. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics and has held research and leadership roles in Canada and Russia. His work bridges advanced computational methods with real-world mining challenges, fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration and capability development within the geoscience community.

Richard Hague’s career has focused upon applied economic geology - mineral exploration; mining and resource geology; project development and evaluation; and due diligence assessment in several commodities and deposit types, including coal, bauxite, epithermal and greenstone/lode gold deposits, and porphyry copper-gold deposits. Richard is currently based in Indonesia as a Specialist Resource Evaluation Geologist for Vale Base Metals Limited, seconded to their joint venture company, PT Sumbawa Timur Mining, and is responsible for the resource geology and estimation aspects for the prefeasibility study evaluation of the 3Bt Onto copper-gold deposit – a hybrid porphyry/high sulfidation deposit – located on Sumbawa Island in Indonesia.