Ausenco is a global company redefining what’s possible. Our team is based across 26 offices in 14 countries, with projects in over 80 locations worldwide. Combining our deep technical expertise with a 30-year track record, we deliver innovative, value-add consulting studies, project delivery, asset operations and maintenance solutions to the mining & metals, oil & gas and industrial sectors. We find a better way.

Eddie is a metallurgist/process engineer with 40+ years’ experience and is globally recognised as a leader in cost-effective process engineering, plant layout and design. His minerals processing and extractive metallurgy experience encompasses precious metals (gold, silver), base metals (copper, lead, nickel, zinc), mineral sands and industrial minerals for resource developments and operations in over 20 countries. He has provided consulting and technical support to Australian and Group offshore offices for process design, metallurgical test work, concept through to feasibility studies, plant optimisation and expansions.

Sam Palaniandy is the Global Product Manager (TowerMill) at Nippon Eirich based in Brisbane. His current role includes technical product support, business development, technical marketing and sales for the TowerMill business. Sam’s technical competence includes fine-grinding circuit process audits (Australia, USA, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, Sweden and China) for process improvement. He has a strong interest in process modeling and ore characterization. He has developed the gravity-induced stirred mill process simulator and currently he is developing an ore characterization test for stirred mill feed. On the commercial site, Sam is currently involved extensively in new market development in Oceana, Russia/CIS and Asia for the TowerMill business.

Shujaat is a mining engineer. He has industrial and research experience in the domains of mine planning, mine production, and mineral processing. He completed his joint-master degree focusing on geometallurgy through a prestigious European Erasmus Mundus scholarship program known as Emerald Master in Resources Engineering. Emerald provided Shujaat with the opportunity to study at the four top-tier European mining universities including The University of Liege, Belgium; University of Lorraine, France; Lulea University of Technology, Sweden; and Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, Germany. During his master thesis, he conducted research on a project of ArcelorMittal mining company, which was focused on investigating the effect of process water salinity on flotation performance. He joined the JKMRC comminution group in late 2019 as a Ph.D. candidate. His Ph.D. research is focused on geometallurgical ore characterisation. He has been awarded the highest academic distinction awards, both in Bachelors and Master.

A researcher, with a Chemical Engineering background, who has published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at local and international conferences in both the Flotation and Comminution fields with 10 years work experience. Skilled at both open-source and licensed coding frameworks like Matlab, Python and Octave. Expertise on a variety of commodities such as platinum, gold, copper and rare earth minerals, as well as vast experience in developing flowsheets to optimise ore grades and product recoveries. As part of my awards, I won first prize at the UKZN PRIS 2020 in the main oral category. I also won the award for Most Impactful Research at the UKZN PRIS 2021. Both awards, formerly sponsored by ECSA, were conferred to me virtually by the Head of College Research at UKZN AES. A member of the Particle Technology Group (PTG), chaired by Prof Indresan Govender, I am fortunate enough to rub shoulders with internationally acclaimed researchers in granular flow. In summary, I am passionate about finding solutions that are underpinned by strong scientific fundamentals whilst being relevant to industry. One is welcome to visit the PTG for research related queries at https://ptg.ukzn.ac.za/.

Alan Varghese is an experienced mechanical engineer pursuing a Ph.D. in Digitalisation of Centrifugal Slurry Pumps at the University of Western Australia whilst concurrently working as Business Development Manager, Pumps at Metso Outotec Australia Ltd. Alan also holds a Master of Business Administration and specializes in slurry pumps and their aftermarket applications within the metals and mineral processing industries.

Marko is currently a senior researcher at the University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute specialising in process modelling and simulation of comminution processes. Marko’s research interests include the development of various new mathematical models and soft sensors for milling circuits and modelling the 3D structure of multi-mineral ore textures and estimating the liberation and separability characteristics of comminution products.

Meolla Yvon is a PhD student at the University of Newcastle and part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Enabling Eco-Efficient Beneficiation of Minerals. She graduated with a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering (Honours) from the University of Newcastle in 2019 and then went on to work in the water industry before deciding to pursue her post-doctoral studies. Her research is mainly focused on the agglomeration of fine mineral particles using a novel emulsion binder with an aim of maximising ore recovery with minimal environmental damage. She is passionate about her work because it is challenging, presents the opportunity to learn something everyday and has the potential to create a real difference for sustainable mining.