Mutee ur Rahman is an engineering honours student at the University of Tasmania and a tailings engineering intern at GHD in Hobart, where he works on tailings storage facility (TSF) projects across Australia and overseas. His research tackles one of mining's most pressing safety challenges: predicting tailings dam failure before it happens. Motivated by the 2019 Brumadinho disaster, his work evaluates the NorSand constitutive model as a tool for identifying static liquefaction risk in upstream TSFs, aiming to give operators early warning of vulnerable zones rather than explanations after the fact. Working across both research and industry, Mutee is passionate about bringing advanced geotechnical modelling into practical, forward-looking tailings risk assessment, and is building a career at the intersection of engineering research and real-world TSF management. Presenting at the New Leaders Conference reflects his commitment to contributing fresh thinking to the future of safe and sustainable mining.

I’m an Honours student in Civil Engineering at the University of Tasmania. My thesis, supervised by Dr Ashley Dyson with industry supervision from Charles Vuillier (GHD), explores the repurposing of mine tailings to minimise or eliminate the need for tailings storage facilities, combining critical metal recovery methods with geotechnical stability analysis.

Darrel is a Graduate Metallurgist with New Porgera Limited (NPL) at the Porgera gold mine in Enga Province, Papua New Guinea, and a New Professional member AAusIMM (NP). As part of Barrick’s COMPASS Graduate Development Program, he undertakes plant rotations across site operations and contributes to metallurgical improvement and trial projects focused on plant performance and optimisation. Darrel graduated from the Papua New Guinea University of Technology in 2025 with a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) in Mineral Processing Engineering. During his undergraduate studies, he served as President of the Mining Engineering Students Association (MESA) and was actively involved in student leadership and professional development initiatives. Following the accreditation of PNGUoT engineering programs under the Washington Accord through Engineers Australia, he joined Engineers Australia as a student member. In his final year, Darrel was awarded a scholarship by New Porgera Limited and completed industrial training at the Porgera operation. He subsequently gained operational experience as a Trainee Plant Operator with K92 Mining before returning to NPL as a graduate metallurgist. Darrel is passionate about process optimisation, sustainable mining practices, and the application of practical metallurgical solutions to improve operational performance across the mining value chain.