keynote speakers

Anna Kaksonen

The keynote lecture, "Environmental applications of biotechnology in mining" will be given by Dr. Anna Kaksonen, Group Leader, Industrial Biotechnology at CSIRO Australia.

Anna has about 20 years’ experience in various aspects of biomining, from bio-oxidising and bioleaching low-grade ores to treating waste streams and recovering resources.  

During her Doctor of Technology degree, she developed fluidized bed reactor processes for biotechnical mine water treatment at Tampere University of Technology (TUT) in Finland. As a Senior Researcher at TUT, she also contributed to the development of heap bioleaching for complex low-grade black schist ores, bioprocesses for excess iron and sulfate removal from barren leach liquors and metal recovery from various metallurgical wastes.

In 2009 Anna joined Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia as a Team Leader of Environmental and Industrial Biotechnology (EIB). 

In 2017 she was appointed as a leader of CSIRO’s Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology Group which has three teams (EIB; Biocatalysis and Synthetic Biology; and Metabolomics and Proteomics) located in Perth, Canberra and Brisbane. 

She has delivered projects to many companies on base metal, precious metal and uranium bioleaching, as well as biotechnical removal of organic and inorganic impurities from hydrometallurgical process waters. She has also been active in urban mining, developing bioprocesses for the extraction of metals from electronic wastes.

Barrie Johnson

The keynote lecture, "How green was my biomining?”; a personal critique of the of the limitations and untapped potential of applying bioprocessing techniques for metal extraction and recovery" will be given by Prof. Barrie Johnson, of Bangor University, UK.
Barrie is Professor of Environmental Biotechnology at Bangor University, UK. He is also Honorary Professor at the University of Exeter, U.K. and at the Central South University, Changsha, China. He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and an Industrial Research Fellow of the Royal Society.


Chris Bryan

The keynote lecture “Bridging the gaps in biomining research and application" will be presented by Dr. Chris Bryan, head of the Geomicrobiology and Environmental Monitoring unit at the French Geological Survey (BRGM).

Chris is a microbiologist with a PhD in molecular and environmental microbiology and is head of the Geomicrobiology and Environmental Monitoring unit at the French Geological Survey (BRGM).

Prior to joining the BRGM in 2018, he was Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Mining at the Camborne School of Mines, UK.

His research focuses on the application of biohydrometallurgy to the recovery of metals from sulfide ores and secondary raw materials and understanding, predicting and preventing the biogenesis of acid mine drainage.


MEI Conferences

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