keynote speakers

Martin Lynch

The keynote lecture "Replacing copper with aluminium is the most effective way to deal with the looming global copper shortages" will be given by Martin Lynch, University of Queensland, Australia.

Martin Lynch is a PhD student at the Sustainable Minerals Institute of the University of Queensland.  He graduated in 1982 as a BE (Chem) from UQ and worked in a series mining companies including Rio Tinto and Iluka Resources.  During that time he wrote Mining in World History, a book which traces the history of global mining from 1500 to the 1970s.  

He changed career path in 2009, becoming the owner and manager of a renewables energy business.  This was sold in 2024, following which he began a PhD at UQ focussing on the use of substitutes for copper with the aim of managing forecast global copper shortages.

Chun-Xia Zhao

The keynote lecture "Sustainable Biotechnology platform for Mineral Recovery" will be given by Prof Chun-Xia Zhao, School of Chemical Engineering, University of Adelaide, Australia.

Chun-Xia is a Professor and an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow in the School of Chemical Engineering at University of Adelaide (UoA), the Deputy Director of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence, and before she joined UoA, she was a group leader, ARC Future fellow, UQ Amplify Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, The University of Queensland. 

She leads a research group focusing on bioinspired engineering across diverse fields ranging from biomedical innovations to resource recovery, including the development of biomimetic materials for cancer nanomedicine and drug delivery (small molecule drugs, proteins and RNAs), as well as biomimetic devices (e.g., tumour-on-a-chip, organ-on-a-chip platforms) for drug development. She has built extensive collaborations with scientists at top universities such as Harvard University, Brown University, etc.  and she serves as the Editors, Editorial Board member for several journals.

MEI Conferences

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