School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne

Australian Synchrotron

Robert completed his PhD at UniSA’s Ian Wark Research Institute in 2010 after studying how theheterogeneity of sulphide minerals alters the evolution of their surface chemistry under processing-related conditions using synchrotron based spectroscopic techniques. A short postdoc at FlindersUniversity followed, where he helped to commission a new metastable impact electron spectroscopy(MIES) system. In 2011 Robert moved to Trieste in Italy to work on the Materials Science Beamlineat the Elettra synchrotron, undertaking research into the interaction between biomolecules and goldnanoparticles while working as a beamline scientist. 2014 saw Robert returned to Australia as abeamline scientist on the Australian Synchrotron’s IMBL dealing with the imaging and tomographyside of beamline operations.

Division of Physics and Applied Physics, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Roberto is interested in the study of the structural properties of amorphous materials. As a model I use computer simulations of granular matter, in which particles interact only via contact forces. The resulting force network in these materials is highly heterogeneous and is still subject of active investigation. I use a complex networks approach to try to understand how the topological features of the material give rise to its physical properties. Among the last tools I have used is persistent homology which, among other advantages, allows to handle networks in which one lacks full knowledge of the connectivity, making it ideal for experimental studies.

University of Melbourne

Prof. Robin Batterham is a chemical engineer by training. Robin Batterham AO is Kernot Professor of Engineering at UoM.  He is the former President of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE).  He was Chief Scientist to the Australian Federal Government (1999-2005).  He has held positions as Group Chief Scientist-Rio Tinto Limited, Chief of the Division of Mineral and Process Engineering at CSIRO and President of The Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) and President (twice) of the International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC).  He has had a distinguished career in research and technology, in the public and private sectors in mining, mineral processing, mineral agglomeration processes, and iron making.  His current research interests centre on energy systems: including geothermal energy, energy reduction in comminution and in dewatering of low grade materials.

Stanford University

Ronaldo Borja is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. He works in the fields of theoretical and computational solid mechanics, geomechanics, and geosciences. At Stanford University, his research includes the development of multiscale discontinuity models for crack and fracture propagation, including the strong discontinuity and extended finite element methods, the development of solution techniques for multiphysics processes such as coupled solid deformation-fluid diffusion in saturated and unsaturated porous media, and the formulation of stabilized finite element methods for nonlinear boundary-value problems in solid and contact mechanics. His current projects include liquefaction and solidification of cohesionless soils, folding and fracturing of sedimentary rocks, and unsaturated flow in double-porosity continua. These works are funded by the Department of Energy, the National Science foundation, and by international grants. He has published more than 250 contributions and is the editorial member of 7 international journals. His work is regularly disseminated through invited and keynote lectures around the world.

Materials Science & Engineering, CSIRO

Sherry is a research scientist with extensive experience in different aspects of x-ray science and instrumentation. Her main activities include synchrotron science, x-ray microscopy and micro-tomography, x-ray phase-contrast imaging, 3D data analysis, big-data analytics, and hardware & software integration. She has also been involved with commercialisation of new technology.

Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Tejas’ is an experimentalist.  He is interested in understanding the response of geomaterials (such as sand, cemented sand, soft rocks) through experiments probing the mechanical response at multiple length scales.  He is especially interested in severe plastic deformation in geomaterials in the context of material processing such as indentation, ploughing, cutting, drilling etc. He investigates the constitutive properties of these geomaterials using traditional elemental tests. Additionally, he uses image based deformation measurements utilizing different regimes of the electromagnetic spectrum and image analysis to understand the evolution of strain, strain rate and temperature during materials processing.  

Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne

Guillermo is a geotechnical engineer whose research focusses on shallow geothermal energy, geophysics and multi-scale porous material characterisation and performance. He has also made contributions to theoretical and numerical investigations of the chemo-mechanical properties of electrically charged porous materials (clays, shales, etc). With other researchers of the Melbourne Energy Institute he is pursuing further research on basic and applied shallow and deep geothermal energy systems.  Guillermo is currently an ARC Future Fellow.

Faculty of Engineering, Monash University

Dr Perera received her PhD degree from Civil Engineering Department of Monash University in February 2012 under supervision of Prof Ranjith Pathegama and short after she received an ARC DECRA award (2013) to continue her CO2 sequestration research and is currently working in that project as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. To date she has published a number of research papers in international journals (more than 35 papers and 9-h index) and is currently working on a book entitled “Geological Sequestration of Carbon Dioxide in Coal Seams”, to be published in late 2015 by Springer. Her outstanding research activities in the Deep Earth Energy Research Group in Monash University have caused her to receive a large number of highly competitive awards including “ROCHA MEDAL 2014” given for the world best PhD thesis in geo-engineering from the International society of rock mechanics (ISRM).

Chief Adviser Geotechnical Rio Tinto

Martyn is an engineer who spent many years in mine geotechnical and hydrogeological consultancies based in the UK and Australia and have been lucky enough to be involved in a broad range of coal, copper, gold, iron ore, mineral sand, salt, talc and uranium projects.  He has worked in over 40 different countries including Iran, Madagascar, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia and Peru.  He notes that engineers in mining companies are from a broad range of backgrounds with recognition of the continued need for collaboration and diversity of thinking to identify the best engineering outcomes.

Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne

Ben gained four years of US industry experience in the research divisions of Microsoft, Google, Intel and Yahoo!; followed by a short stint at IBM Research Australia. As a full-time Researcher at Microsoft Research, Silicon Valley for close to 3 years, Rubinstein shipped production systems for entity resolution in Bing and the Xbox360 (driving huge success accounting for revenues in the $100m's); he actively researches topics in machine learning, security, privacy, and databases. Rubinstein earned the PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley under Peter Bartlett in 2010, collaborating closely with the SecML group, at the boundary of machine learning and security.

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW

Adrian’s research area, geotechnical engineering, is about understanding how infrastructure interacts with the ground, eg. tunnels, bridges, foundations, dams, slopes, buildings, roads, railways, ports and landfills.  His current research interests include the way unsaturated soils interact with shallow foundations and retaining walls; the fundamental modelling of the stress–strain behaviour of soils, linking microstructure to large scale behaviour; fundamental rock mechanics, focussing on failure mechanisms and microstructural deformation; and the mechanics of fibre reinforced geomaterials and their use in infrastructure to increase strength and failure resistance.

School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

Professor Sandiford is a geologist who works on landscapes, mountains and earth energetics, and is increasingly interested in the relationship between people and the planet. His research has taken him to many farfetched parts of the planet including Antarctica, remote Australia, Timor, Tibet, the Kunlun and the Himalaya. His privilege is to meet and work amongst peoples in communities that have lived for millennia in some of the most dynamic and remote parts of our planet. Mike's geological research on the origin and evolution of the continents has been published in over 150 research papers and was recognised with the award of the Mawson Medal for 'outstanding contributions to earth science in Australia'. He is a regular contributor to popular press on geological issues and, especially, the role of humans as geological agents.  

Georgia Tech/KAUST

J. Carlos Santamarina is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, where he holds the Goizueta Foundation Faculty Chair. Two books and more than 200 publications authored by Dr. Santamarina summarise salient concepts and research results in the areas of micromechanics, geophysics and stability of seabed (due to gas hydrate extraction). His former doctoral students are faculty members, researchers or practicing engineers at leading universities and organizations worldwide. Dr. Santamarina is a frequent keynote speaker at international events; a member of both Argentinean National Academies (Sciences and Engineering); and a member of the standing Committee on Geological and Geotechnical Engineering at the USA National Academies. He is a recipient of a number of prestigious awards including the ASTM Hogentogler Award and the Karl Terzaghi Lecture 2014.

School of Mathematics and Statistics, UWA

Michael’s research centres on understanding the behaviour of complex physical systems. Many real-world systems (in geomechanics, and also epidemiology, neurophysiology, and cellular metabolic processes for example) may be best described as a large number of interacting parts. The dynamical behaviour of each part may be described in simple terms but the interaction between them is complex and often heterogenous. By building models from data and describing that interaction as a complex network, his work aims to provide a mathematical description of the emergent behaviour of the overall system. Michael's current research interest focus on application of these ideas to geomechanical processes, epidemiological models, gene expression data, collective dynamics of animal populations, and quantifying deterministic nonlinear dynamics from scalar time series data. Michael is currently an ARC Future Fellow.

School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

Antoinette is an applied mathematician.  A key focus of her research is the modelling and characterisation of granular failure – from data.  Examples of past work where she has worked closely with end users and tailored her research to deliver what they can use includes: fundamental research with the US Army and, more recently, with the US Air Force on the contact interaction mechanics of autonomous vehicles and structures that interact with granular materials, and pattern mining of data on microstructure gathered from sensors both on surface and buried deep in granular materials.  A recent key capability, using data from X-ray microCT and demonstrated for laboratory-scale samples of sand, is the early prediction of the location of the yet-to-form failure zone while the material is still stable – well before and precursory failure mechanisms has been known to occur.

Department of Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne

Joost van der Linden is a PhD student in Infrastructure Engineering at the University of Melbourne. As part of the geotechnical engineering group, his work focuses on developing a data-driven framework to predict conduction phenomena in porous, granular materials. Using discrete element simulations, finite element simulations, complex networks and machine learning, the framework that Joost and his supervisors are developing will aid in providing new insights into the effect of microstructure on fluid flow and heat transfer. Prior to his PhD, Joost completed his BSc and MSc degrees in Applied Mathematics at the Delft University of Technology, gaining industry experience from internships at IBM and Schlumberger. 

Materials Science & Engineering, CSIRO

Sam is a physicists who leads the CSIRO Materials Science & Engineering Division, and Research Project Leader on Data-Constrained Modeling (DCM) in CSIRO Computational & Simulation Science Transformational Capability Platform. Dr Yang has developed the concept of data-constrained modeling (DCM) in 2007 and has been leading the DCM development in CSIRO. The DCM software has been used for quantitative microstructure characterization in a diverse range of applications worldwide, including steel solidifications and petroleum reservoir modelling with BHP Research Labs, and Telstra Research Labs on biological effects of electromagnetic radiation.

Civil Engineering, Yonsei University

Tae Sup is a geotechnical engineer, whose research interest includes the thermal characterisation of soils, sustainable engineered soils, coupled phenomena in soils, sustainable and non-conventional energy engineering (gas hydrates, geological sequestration of carbon dioxide, geothermal energy), and x-ray microtomography. Tae Sup is currently an Associate Professor.

Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Jie is a physicist.  His research focusses on the dynamics of granular materials from microscopic “atomic” level all the way up to the macroscopic system size to build connections between physics at different scales. Dr. Zhang’s experiments have led to the discovery of a novel regime, so-called “shear jammed” regime, in the phase diagram for granular materials (Nature, 2011).  His latest research, “Fluctuations of particle motion in granular avalanches – from the microscopic to the macroscopic scales” recently published in Soft Matter (2015), gives insight into mechanisms operating at the particle level in laboratory scale experiments.