Mitra is currently an Associate Professor and Centennial Chair of Rock Engineering at the School of Mining Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). He completed his BEng in Mining Engineering in India and then had his Masters at Penn State and PhD at Virginia Tech. He then moved on to join as an academic at UNSW Sydney for over 10 years and then moved to South Africa where he is currently employed. His research expertise includes Rock Mechanics, Mining Innovation and Learning & Teaching.

Dr. Simit Raval has over 24 years of combined experience in the mining industry and academia. Currently, as the Co-Director of the Laboratory for Imaging of the Mine Environment (LIME), he leads an independent interdisciplinary research area in the School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering at University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney that is focused on utilising data from sensors mounted on various platforms, from satellites through to drones. His research is focused on development of various advanced sensor integration (LiDAR, optical, hyperspectral, SAR) on a mobile platform for environmental and safety monitoring applications. He is currently leading two Australian Coal Industry’s Research Program (ACARP) projects (C26030 & C27057) that involve mobile scanning technologies.

Dr. Jun-ichi Kodama is Associate-professor of rock mechanics laboratory at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. His research and teaching activities focus on rock mechanics and mining engineering. His research interest is in mechanical behaviors of rocks under ultimate conditions, stability assessment of rock slopes and tunnels. He is also interested in development of new resources including Underground Coal Gasification (UCG). He is a chairman of technical committee of the Hokkaido tunnel research association, Japan. He is a board member of Japanese society for rock mechanics and an editor-in-chief of International Journal of Japanese society for rock mechanics.