John Steen is Associate Professor in Strategy at the University of Queensland Business School in Brisbane and Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Business and Economics. John is currently leading major international research studies on the subject of innovation and sustainable development in the resources sector and in developing economies. This includes the transition to new digital business models and performance in megacapital ($1billion +) projects, particularly in the resources sector. Current partners in these projects include University College London, Cambridge University, University of British Columbia, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Government of Vietnam, Queensland Government, UQ Sustainable Minerals Institute and Ernst and Young (EY). John is highly sought after as a guest speaker and commentator and has given talks on strategy and innovation to businesses and governments in Australia, Asia and Europe. In 2014 he released two reports on the future of the global mining industry with EY that received international media coverage, including commentary in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. John is currently senior editor for the Project Management Journal – the research journal of the Project Management Institute.

Ed Holloway is a principal consultant with Xtega Pty Ltd. He has experience covering a range of technical, operational and project based mining positions. Ed is a member of the AusIMM and a Senior Associate of The Financial Services Institute of Australia; he has a bachelor in Mining Engineering and a Master of Applied Finance. He is a Chartered Professional Engineer (AusIMM 206221) and a Registered Professional Engineer of Queensland (RPEQ 14002).

Mr. Battalgazy is a Master`s degree student of mining engineering at Nazarbayev University. His area of research is multivariate geostatistics and its application for mine optimization, under the supervision of Dr. Madani. He is a winner of 2nd Central Asian MineTech Mining challenges competition at MINEX Forum Central Asia 2018. He was awarded the best mining engineering student’s prize “Golden Hephaestus” at the National Industry contest in Kazakhstan on June 19, 2018, and participated as a speaker in the 25th World Mining Congress (WMC) with a presentation on the topic of "Probabilistic Domaining of Aluminum Areas in Iron Deposits".

Alexey is a business manager with over 18 years’ commercial and project management experience. He led several complex due diligence, resource and reserve estimation studies as Project Manager and financial modeler. He is a contributor to major Russian Mining and geology magazines on international reporting standards for Resources and Reserves, on impact mining has on general economy and required changes to maximize it. Alexey’s capabilities also include strategic mining schedule optimisation. Alexey holds PRINCE2 Foundation 2017 and APM Project Fundamentals Qualification certificates. Alexey holds an MSc in International Economics and is currently an MSc student with Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter, UK