Professor Robin Batterham joined the Melbourne School of Engineering as Kernot Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2010. He has wide interests including reducing emissions through soil sequestration, application of mesoscience to mining, dewatering of tailings and elimination of tailings through in place leaching. He is past President of the Academy of Technology and Engineering (2007-2012), former Chief Scientist of Australia (1999-2005) and for over 20 years Global Head of Innovation (and other positions) in Rio Tinto. He has twice chaired the International Mineral Processing Congress, Chairs the selection panels for both the Australia India Strategic Research Fund and the Australia China Strategic Research Fund and chaired the International Energy Agency Expert Group on Science for Energy.

Dr. Bascur is currently Principal Digital Transformation at OSB Digit, LLC and Consultant Fellow for Seeq Advanced Analytics. He received dual degrees in ChemE and MetE from U de Concepcion and PhD in Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Utah. He worked as a principal at OSISOFT for 25 years. Staff engineer for Pennzoil and was process control engineer working for Duval Corporation (now Freeport McMoRan). He designed a Digital Plant Strategy transform sensor data into Operational Insights (Data + Operational Events) to enable Overall Production Effectiveness and Predictive Analytics. The strategy identifies the Hidden Production/Energy/Water Losses in an Industrial Plant enabling Production Maximization while eliminating losses. This modern strategy enables the transformation of huge amounts of unusable data into InFORMation to generate additional Operating Insights, Predictive Models, and integrates with Business Intelligence Tools such as MS PowerBI, Seeq Advanced Analytics, and others.

Dr Vasile Murariu graduated Faculty of Physics in 1993 at Univ. Al.I.Cuza in Iasi, Romania. In 1998 Dr Murariu got their Ph.D from the same university in the field of Magnetic Separation. Between 1993 and 2001, they worked at National Research Institute in Iasi, Romania. In 2001, they moved to South Africa where they worked for De Beers in their research unit DebTech. In DebTech Dr Murariu optimized the Magnetic roll design which is currently used in De Beers mines for magnetic separation. From 2008 they are working for Metso:Outotec as Scientist, responsible for the DEM and SPH simulations of mining equipment including Mill Discharge, Mill Trommel, Screens, Crushers, Feed Chutes, etc. Dr Murariu is an author of more than 40 papers and has presented more than 20 papers at conferences. Dr Murariu is a reviewer for Minerals Engineering Journal and IOP Science.

Currently is a Principal Engineer at Weir Minerals Australia, providing innovative solutions to their product range to achieve performance improvements. He has more than 20 years of experience in computational modelling, along with mechanical design, instrumentation, signal processing and big data processing, applied to industrial and fundamental problem solving. He also has experience at mine sites, which compliments his modelling expertise. His goal is to understand fundamental mechanism in processors and equipment’s, particularly in mineral processing, through applied research to offer solutions to industry and to educate engineers and researchers with problem solving skills for tackling future challenges. Nirmal has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, specialising in Computational Fluid Dynamics and Combustion, from Imperial College London, UK. Also has a BScEng(Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor with JKMRC/UQ, where he worked for 8 years as a Senior Research Fellow.

Helene is a research engineer specialized in mineral processing, she is in charge of several projects: valorization of heavy media tailings, recovery of metal particles in SiMn slag, Falcon modelling, manganese fine up-grading... She previously held a position as engineer in mineral processing at the GeoRessources laboratory (University of Lorraine), where she participated in European projects for the recovery of critical metals (Sn, W and sulphides).