John is a minerals industry strategist, economist, and geologist, working for MinEx Consulting. He also teaches on the MBA programme and is finishing a PhD at the University of Western Australia. You may also know him as one of the co-authors of the weekly 'Strictly Boardroom' column on MiningNews.net. He is, of course, a Member of the AusIMM.

Prof Jacques Eksteen is the Chair for Extractive Metallurgy, the Director of the Gold Technology Group (GTG), and the Interim Research Director for the Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC). His mandate is to provide leadership in extractive metallurgy research from Curtin University's Bentley Campus. His areas of research focuses on extractive metallurgy of Precious, Base and Critical Metals. The GTG has developed a number of innovations that are currently being commercialised such as the Carbon Scout™ carbon meter fro CIL/CIP circuits (commercialised with Gekko Systems) and the GlyLeach™ (commercialised with Minng and Process Solutions). The FBICRC is a CRC focussed on the cradle to grave aspects of batteries: from resources, through the production and deployment value chain to recycling.

A Minerals Engineer with 20 years varied experience in the Mining and Chemical Process Industries, in both Project and Operations roles. Andrew has experience in developing and commercialising complex hydrometallurgical processes with exposure to a broad range of commodities and held engineering and leadership roles in the design, construction and commissioning of major Greenfield and Brownfield processing facilities. Andrew has worked with Lithium Australia for over 2 years supporting development of both the SiLeach® and LieNA® process technologies.

Andrew is currently the Global Business Director: Geochemistry for SciAps Inc-a US based manufacturer of portable XRF, LIBS and Raman analysers. His experience with field portable XRF [pXRF] for the past 15 years and hand-held LIBS for the past 5 years has allowed the development of skills with regards to the application of these technologies to mineral exploration, mining, mineral processing, environmental and agricultural applications around the world. In addition to pXRF and LIBS he is also experienced with field portable XRD, Raman and NIR Spectrometers.

Associate Professor Gamini Senanayake is a senior lecturer in Mineral Science at Murdoch University and an expert on the application of ionic activity data and speciation analysis to hydrometallurgical processes and the rationalisation of the thermodynamics and kinetics of the leaching of minerals and recovery of metals. Associate Professor Senanayake’s project include: Catalysts for reactions of hydrometallurgical importance; high temperature hydrometallurgical thermodynamics; beneficiation and utilisation of red mud residues from alumina processing; mechanisms of gold leaching; ion salvation thermodynamics and applications, and; atmospheric leaching and recovery of metals from nickel laterite ores.