Chris is a Digital Solutions & Innovation Manager with over 16 years’ experience in the mining and minerals processing industry, with a passion for OT/IT and automation. From his roots, as a hands-on Industrial Chemist and Process Engineer in refineries and processing plants, he now looks for opportunities to provide innovative and disruptive technological solutions to enable cloud-based monitoring, optimisation and support of remote mining operations. Managing a diverse digital engineering and data science team he is responsible for research and development initiatives and building scalable software solutions for the business and its customers. He is an AusIMM Fellow with innovative work published in various journals.

Paseka Leeuw is a Professional Engineer with PhD and Master of Science in Mining Engineering degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa. He also holds an MBA degree from De Montfort University, UK. He obtained his BSc Eng. in Mining Engineering from Wits University in 1994. After graduation, he joined the mining industry to hone his knowledge of mining engineering, particularly in metalliferous mining. Later, he founded a contract mining company, before joining Wits University’s School of Mining Engineering in 2009 as a Lecturer teaching underground and surface mining methods and mine transportation. Currently, he is a Senior Lecturer teaching and supervising both undergraduate and postgraduate students in the areas of mining equipment application and logistics, and mineral economics focusing on, mineral value chains, and mining technology inputs. He has also presented papers at mining conferences and published technical papers in journals.

Milka Madahana is currently a Lecturer at the School of Mining Engineering, at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she conducts data science, control, automation and application of digital technologies in the mining industry related research work, and she also lectures data science related courses. She holds doctorate, Master’s degree and Bachelor of Science in Engineering which were all conferred by the University of the Witwatersrand. She has worked as a Data scientist for the Business Intelligence Service Unit of the University of the Witwatersrand and continues to collaborate with institutions of higher learning as well as the industry both locally and internationally on data science and automation related projects. She has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed journals and conference papers, as well as two book chapters in areas of application of artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts to mining systems. Her other research interests include modelling, automation, and control of engineering systems. She has also reviewed articles for several international journals and conferences in line with her research interests.