SIGNATURE LECTURE AND SEMINAR SERIES

Now in their second year, the Centre’s two lecture series went from strength to strength in 2022, attracting inspiring speakers for the Centre’s ‘Signature Lectures’ and informative ‘Internal Seminar’ series

Centre Executive Committee member, Prof George Franks coordinates COEMinerals Signature Lectures and Internal Seminars and is master of ceremonies.

Signature Lecture Series

Invited eminent scientists or industrialists from around the globe join COEMinerals members to deliver a topic via the Centre’s prestigious Signature Lecture Series. These lectures enable Centre members, along with COEMinerals partner organisations staff and interested others to join a video-call presentation to learn from and engage with research and industry experts from Australia and around the world.

Speakers are well-respected and internationally acclaimed. They each explore a topic relating to modern minerals processing, spanning the technical to the philosophical, as well as incorporating community insights and providing context to wider challenges associated with the solving aspects associated with creating sustainable change. In this friendly forum, speakers tend to share their personal views and spur curiosity, questions and new ideas in attendees.

Awareness of contemporary concepts and trends in mineral processing research and industrial operation is important context building for our students and team. Supporting professional development and network building for PhDs and ECRs in particular, the content delivered, and question-and-answer sections, provides insights and inspiration to Centre researchers and students. It also helps put Centre work into a ‘big picture’ context by exploring the influence of mineral processing on the environment, society and communities.

The Lectures are generally about 45 minutes duration, followed by 15 minutes of discussion and questions. Lecture recordings are generally made widely available on COEMinerals’ social media and website.

Signature Lectures in 2022:

ƒ 9 Feb – Prof Robert Davis, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, Modeling of Flow-enhanced Particle Capture

ƒ 6 Apr – Mark Coghill, Rio Tinto, Tailings management and repurposing

ƒ 1 June – Prof Anna Littleboy, Sustainable Minerals Institute, UQ, So what does it mean to be “eco-efficient”?

ƒ 29 June – Prof David Weitz, Harvard, USA, New droplet-templated materials made with microfluidics

ƒ 27 July – Michelle Ash, OZ Minerals, Finding New Ways to Extract Modern Metals

ƒ 2 Nov – Prof Bre-Anne Sainsbury, Deakin, Environmentally Sustainable Disposal of Mine Tailings through Cemented Paste Backfill

ƒ 30 Nov – A/Prof Kathryn Mumford, UOM, Solvent extraction as part of minerals processing

ƒ 14 Dec - Prof Markus A. Reuter, SMS Group, Germany, Green metals: Enabling the circular economy

Internal Seminar Series

Each month the Centre provides two short-seminars (each about 20 minutes in duration) that deep-dive into scientific or technical content which is highly applicable to academic learning, and which provides an opportunity for connectivity for teams across the Centre.

During 2022, this series featured Centre ECRs, Research Fellows and PhDs as speakers, at times supported by a Centre Chief Investigator (CI). This was a change from 2021, where CIs generally presented. Speakers join the call from each node, and at times from across the globe, with presentations delivered on-line.

The main goal of the seminars is to update Centre members on the progress of current related research projects. They contain technical details of the projects to a COEMinerals internal audience, making them different to Signature Lectures.

The added-value of these seminars is the lively scientific debate generated about the research presented, which spurs follow-up connections and conversations between nodes.

Internal Seminar Speakers in 2022

ƒ 23 Feb – Dr Ai Wang, UON and Dr Mohammad Hoque, UON

ƒ 9 Mar - Dr Eirini Goudeli, UOM and Dr Nilanka Ekanayake, UOM

ƒ 23 Mar - Siân Parkes, UON and Prof Chris Aldrich, Curtin

ƒ 20 Apr – Sajid Hassan, UOM and Jackquline Eardley, UOM

ƒ 4 May – A/Prof Seher Ata, UNSW

ƒ 15 June – A/Prof Marta Krasowska, UniSA

ƒ 10 Aug – Dr Chris Ritchie, Monash and Tina Hsia, Monash

ƒ 7 Sept – Dr Negin Amini, Deakin and Dr Ellen Moon, Deakin

ƒ 21 Sept – Dr Ellen Moon (part 2), Deakin and Dr Ghislain Bournival, UNSW

ƒ 5 Oct – Yang Li, UQ/UoA and Dr Guangze (Daniel) Yang, UoA