Rod Smith is Chief Advisor – Planning & Scheduling with Rio Tinto’s Growth and Innovation team, based in Brisbane. Rod joined Rio Tinto in 1986 as a geologist, working on coal mine operations, exploration and projects in Australia, India, Colombia and Indonesia. In the mid 1990’s he was appointed Industry Fellow with the Co-operative Research Centre for Black Coal Utilisation, engaging with coal producers, universities and utilities to deliver industry-relevant research into emissions reduction. Returning to Rio Tinto he moved into operational technical leadership roles with Coal & Allied and later to Rio’s central technical function to build and lead multi-disciplinary teams across geoscience, geotechnical and mining engineering, business analysis and risk functions. Since 2013 he has worked with senior technical and operational leaders across Rio Tinto’s product groups in areas of strategic decision making, orebody productivity, mine planning process effectiveness, business transformations, supply chain optimisation and competency development. Rod has a Bachelor of Applied Science in Applied Geology from the Queensland Institute of Technology. He completed Rio Tinto’s Business Leadership program through the Australian Graduate School of Management. Rod has served on the faculty of Rio Tinto’s Resource to Value professional development program for senior leaders and is currently a member of Rio Tinto’s Ore Reserves Steering Committee and Geoscience Leadership Forum.

Completed a BSc in Mathematics at Flinders University in 2003. Employed as a borehole logger with Heathgate Resources at their Beverly Uranium Mine in 2007 and 2008. Graduated with First Class Honours in Petroleum Geology and Geophysics from Adelaide University in 2009. Employed as a geologist with BMA in 2010. Worked at their Blackwater and Goonyella Riverside metallurgical coal mines until 2016. Undertook an MSc in Geostatistics part-time at Adelaide University, completed in 2016. Currently working as a mining engineer in BHP’s Brisbane office focused on coal blending and studying for a PhD part time at the University of Queensland.

Dr Bill Shaw is now an independent mining consultant with his own company Ore Control specializing in mining grade control. He has extensive experience in economic geology including mineral resource and ore reserve estimation, mining grade control, sampling studies and mining project evaluation. He has operational experience in gold and ferrous metals and resource modelling experience in many commodities. He has audited mineral resources and ore reserves for many commodities to international standards including the JORC, US-SEC, Canadian NI43-101 and South African SAMREC Codes. He has been involved in the management of large evaluation projects and major audits. Bill has a Bachelor of Science in Geology from Melbourne University, a Master of Geoscience in Mineral Economics from Macquarie University and a PhD in Mining Grade Control from the University of Western Australia. He is a Fellow and Chartered Professional of both the AusIMM and the AIG (RPGeo). He has many voluntary roles including on JORC, VALMIN and IMVAL for the AusIMM and AIG. He is the Past-President of the Australian Geoscience Council, the peak body representing all Geoscience organisations in Australia. He is on the Executive of UNCOVER AUSTRALIA and was the Chair of the AGC Convention held in Adelaide during Earth Science Week 2018.

Since graduating from the University of Queensland in 1987, David spent 15 years at the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre conducting mining research roles under several AMIRA projects and was responsible for instrumentation and software development for the Mining Research Group. Post JKRMC, David worked at Metso Process Technology and Innovation (PTI) for 9 years in various roles, and several years at CRC Ore as the Principal Mining Engineer, where he focused on Grade Engineering. David was an inventor of multiple ore tracking technologies, including SmartTags and BMMs, where he used industry knowledge to practically solve complex problems. David joined OBC to create systems for improving value for surface mines through optimizing ore control post-blast

Hem Chandra is a Geologist with over 12 years of experience working in the fundamental coal research and coal mining industry across the Southern Sydney Basin, Coal Basins of Queensland and Jharia Coalfield. Hem has developed his acumen as a Coal Geologist through working in a variety of roles from CSIR, India research intern, mine geology, resource quality assessment, technical marketing of coal, resource evaluation to providing geological input into a variety of technical feasibility studies. Hem has co-authored various Indian coal industry geo-scientific publications and one international publication in the Science Direct. He is currently working in the capacity of a Resource Geologist in Brisbane at Anglo American plc Ltd.