keynote speakers

Stewart Brand

The keynote lecture "The future of geometallurgy" was given by Stewart Brand, of BHP, Australia.

Stewart is  Principal Global Geometallurgy in the BHP Resource Centre of Excellence where he leads strategic geometallurgy projects.  

After completing a BSc (Hons) in Geology from the University of Cape Town in 2003 he joined ISCOR Mining, focussing on the mineralogy of steelmaking raw materials. In 2008 he joined BHP Olympic Dam as a senior mineralogist and later senior process engineer after completing a MEngSc in Metallurgy at the Western Australian School of Mines. In 2013 he joined Rio Tinto as a senior process engineer supporting their Pilbara Iron Ore operations and, after completing an MBA, joined the Rio Tinto Commercial team in Singapore with market analysis, commodity price forecasts and later as Principal Technical Marketing, with Iron Ore Value-in-Use analysis. 

In 2022, Stewart re-joined BHP as Principal Global Geometallurgy in the Resource Centre of Excellence, where he leads strategic geometallurgy projects. 

Anita Parbhakar-Fox

The keynote lecture, "Mine waste transformation through characterisation- a mission to reimagine waste management" was given by Anita Parbhakar-Fox, A/Prof at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Anita  is a Principal Research Fellow in Applied Geochemistry and the founding leader of the Mine Waste Transformation through Characterisation (MIWATCH) group at the University of Queensland, Australia. 

Anita's group focus on mine waste characterisation to improve mine planning and waste management practices. She has developed new tests and protocols for improving waste characterisation and is also involved in identifying remediation options for abandoned/ historical mine sites. 

Currently, Anita is leading government and industry funded projects characterising a range of mine waste materials across Australia to evaluate their economic potential with a focus on critical metal recovery.

Quentin Dehaine

The keynote lecture, "Assessment of trends in cobalt mining and processing in relation to mineralogy" was given by Quentin Dehaine, Senior Researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland.

Quentin is a senior researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland where he has been leading several national and EU research and innovation projects on ore geology, mineral processing, traceability and geometallurgy of battery minerals (Cobalt, Lithium) and critical raw materials (CRMs) such as Rare Earths Elements (REEs). 

After completing his Ph.D. at the University of Lorraine (Nancy, France), he worked as a postdoc researcher at the Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter (UK) working on the geometallurgy of cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In 2019, Quentin joined the GTK with the objective of developing innovative integrated approaches to support mine value chain optimisation, responsible sourcing, reducing technical risk, maximising resource efficiency and minimising environmental impacts. 

Quentin is also the officer for Scandinavia within the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) Initiative on Forensic Geology (IFG).

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