Research Staff

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Research Staff

Professor Adair is originally from the United Kingdom. Initially a geologist by training, he joined the South African Platinum Industry in the late 1980s. Here he specialized primarily in the application of quantitative mineralogical techniques to help resolve mineral processing issues in a variety of concentrators. In 1992 he joined CSIRO at the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies in Pinjarra Hills. His primary responsibilities related as Program Manager for several CSIRO Minerals groups, focused on the application of advanced analytical tools for the Minerals and Mining industry. For the past eight years he has worked for the Rio Tinto group with a technical brief ranging from acoustic control in grinding circuits, the provision of mineral specific reagents and on line sensors in flotation systems and the application of LCA to circuit design and optimization. He recently returned from a three year secondment at Kennecott Utah Copper to take up his current role as Director of the JKMRC.

Emmy Manlapig received his BSc MetEng at the University of the Philippines, and joined the JKMRC in 1973 to do postgraduate research on flotation simulation and control. He was awarded MEngSc in 1975 and PhD in 1977. He then conducted post doctoral research work at the Michigan Technological University, USA from 1977-1979. Emmy specialised in conventional and autogenous grinding simulation and control. He returned to the JKMRC in 1979 as a Research Fellow to implement control at a number of concentrators in Australia. In 1980 he joined Mount Isa Mines Limited. He was with MIM from 1980 to 1990 in a number of senior capacities including Mineral Processing Research Manager. He conducted and directed research in mineral processing including liberation, grinding, classification and flotation.

Wendy first joined the JKMRC as an Administrative Assistant in 1988. She then moved with her family to Townsville. She was appointed to the position of Project Management Officer in late 2003. This is a new role within the centre, assisting the Project Managers with administrative and financial aspects of organising the various projects within the centre. This involves detailed financial analysis, managing project files, assisting research staff and students with new procedures for project management.

Dee Bradshaw

Matthew Brennan graduated in Chemical Engineering from the University of New South Wales in 1981 and worked for two years at the BHP Port Kembla Steelworks. He gained an MSc in 1984 and in 1988 completed a PhD at UNSW studying the recovery of natural gas condensates using membrane technology. He worked for COSTEC Pty. Ltd. from 1988 to 1993 where he developed process models for power station simulators.
He came to the JKMRC in 1993 where he developed a dynamic model of a rotary kiln for RGC Mineral Sands Pty. Ltd. Since that time he has been engaged in further modelling projects for RGCMS (now Iluka Resources) and also has been working on simulations of mineral processing equipment using Computational Fluid Dynamics. The CFD studies include simulations of gravity sluices, flotation cells and cyclone separators.

Nenad is a Research Fellow at the JKMRC and holds Bachelors and MSc degrees in Geology and Applied Geophysics and a PhD in Mining Engineering. He has more than 20 years experience in applied geophysics, rock mechanics and blasting geomechanics. He joined the staff of JKMRC in 1992 and is involved in applied research related to rock fragmentation, explosive detonation modelling, geotechnical numerical modelling, blast damage, blast vibrations, structural vibrations and seismic tomography. The work has been implemented in mine sites in Australia, New Guinea, Chile, South Africa, USA and Canada.

Jessica Gray

Ying Gu

Marco Hilden

Dr Peter Holtham is Project Leader of the ARC-SPIRT Titanium Minerals Project, the AMIRA P255D Titanium Minerals Project and the MCS Tomography Project. He is also Project Leader of a Mine to Mill Project.
Peter gained hands-on mineral processing experience in industry, in his case in Africa, where he worked for mining companies in Zambia and Namibia, before undertaking a masters degree at Manchester University in the UK.
Moving from the United Kingdom to Australia in 1984, Peter completed a part time PhD in spiral concentrators while lecturing at the University of New South Wales.
Peter joined the JKMRC in 1992, initially as Mineral Sands Project Leader, before moving to Coal Preparation in 1995.

Toni Kojovic

Janine is a Senior Research Fellow and has a PhD in Surface and Colloid Chemistry. She has extensive experience in managing industry and university research projects from her work at Rio Tinto sites, Technology and Innovation and with Universities. She is now investigating opportunities for applying JK’s know-how to the upgrade of bauxite ores for alumina processing.

Simon gained his BAppSc (Physics and Geology) from QUT in 1994. He joined the JKMRC in January 1995 as a research assistant for Dr Toni Kojovic. Areas he worked in were shape analysis of aggregate, image analysis, basic communition and mineral sands. In June 1995 he was employed as a geophysics well logging field engineer for BPB Instruments Slimline. This work included geophysics data collection, quality control client liaison, equipment maintenance and repair, in multiple coal mines and exploration programs (often in remote areas). In 1997 Simon went to the W.H. Bryan Mining Geology Centre for 18 months. Areas studied were geostatistics, mining geology, mining engineering, open pit optimisation and basic computer programming. Mining software training included Datamine/Guide, Whittle 4D/4X and Gslib. In August 1998, Simon returned to the JKMRC as a research assistant with the blasting program (blast chamber test work) and Mine to Mill communition test work as well as basic Mine to Mill modelling. Simon has also worked with the Mining Group. Simon also spent a very brief time in the Geomechanics Laboratory at QCAT under Dr. Jim Boland (March 1999). In July 2000 Simon enrolled in a MEngSc at the JKMRC in the Mine to Mill group and submitted his thesis for the degree of PhD in March 2005.

Gonzalo Montez

Rob Morrison completed a BE in metallurgy at the University of Queensland in 1972, and a PhD at the JKMRC in 1976 in the modelling of high tension roll separation. He worked for fours years at Bougainville Copper Limited in a development role, and in leading the process control group which introduced grinding circuit modelling, OSA and extensive classification development at BCL. He joined Fluor Australia in 1980 as a Supervising Engineer and worked in a wide variety of roles including process engineer, commissioning, project management and sales coordination. Major projects included the Elura concentrator and backfill plant. He returned to the JKMRC in 1986 to become JKTech's first full time employee. Rob was appointed Manager of JKTech in 1989 and is now Technical Director, JKMRC. He has wide interests in the modelling of mineral processes (particularly comminution), process control and minerals education, and is an active consultant in several fields including comminution.

D R Nagaraj obtained his BSc (Hons) degree from Bangalore University, India, followed by a BEng and an MSc from the Indian Institute of Science, and an EngScDoctorate from Columbia University, New York. Since 1979 he has worked on research projects for Cytec, and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at their Stamford laboratories. His main areas of interest are “green” chemistry, mineral resource recovery (physical and chemical separations), (metal complexation and effluent treatment, dispersion and flocculation, hydrometallurgy and solvent extraction. Some of his most important achievements include formalizing a rational Donor-Acceptor model for designing both small molecules and polymers for selective modification of surface properties of minerals and metals, development of an holistic approach and implementation tools for reagent selection and optimization in minerals separation, use of the SIMS surface analysis technique to characterise adsorbed reagent species and inadvertent metal ion activation, and development and commercialization of a wide array of novel reagents in mineral processing, including organic complexing agents, specialty surfactants and functionalized water soluble polymers, many of which are greener alternatives to traditionally used reagents and used for green processes. D R Nagaraj has received many awards, most recently being elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In addition to a long list of publications in scientific journals, Nagaraj currently holds 21 patents. He leads the JKMRC’s flotation chemistry research initiative, which is funded by 5 major mining companies and the University of Queensland.

Tim Nappier-Munn

Khoi Nguyen

Malcolm Powell

Frank Shi

Esther Soden

John Tucker

Sergio Vianna

Steve Walters

Yicai Wang

Nirmal Weerasekara

Bill Whiten

Elaine Wightman

Xiaoli Yuan

Contact Information
Isles Road, Indooroopilly, Qld Australia 4068
Phone:+61 7 3365 5888
Fax: +61 7 3365 5999
Email: jkmrc@uq.edu.au

© 200500025B

Authorised by: Director, JKMRC