Facilitators

Dr. Friederike Koerting (HySpex) - a remote sensing geologist, entrepreneur, and passionate advocate for innovative, sustainable mining. At HySpex (Norsk Elektro Optikk) in Oslo, she works as an Applied Geoscience Strategist, helping companies in the mining and raw materials sector unlock value, reduce risk, and save time through the power of hyperspectral imaging (HSI). She led over 70 feasibility studies globally, spanning platforms from lab setups and UAVs to satellite data. She is also the co-founder and COO of rad.Data Spectral Analytics UG, a startup tackling complex mining challenges through spectral analytics. Her passion lies at the intersection of geoscience, technology, and communication. 

Associate Professor Steven Micklethwaite (UQ) – a geoscientist, Director of the Drones Collaborative Research Platform, UQ and lead in interdisciplinary approaches to resource supply chains, sustainability and mine waste. At the Sustainable Minerals Institute he led the Australian node of the Horizon Europe M4Mining project along with Katerina Savinova, helping develop real-time hyperspectral imaging for drones. Key Australian waste/tailings study sites included Mary Kathleen and Mount Morgan. He is tackling the complex challenges around monitoring and reducing mine waste by driving initiatives in drone remote sensing and sampling, economic modelling, mineral chemistry and novel bioreactor processing routes.

Dr. Rocio Vargas Soto (GeoImage) - a Geologist and Geochemist (BSc (Hons), MSc (University of Chile), PhD (University of Queensland)). She has provided technical support at IMDEX in South America and worked as a Project Geologist in the Andes, including EMSA (Codelco) at El Teniente and the NuevaUnión JV (Teck-Newmont) in Northern Chile. She later served as Geochemist and Spectral Mineralogy specialist on Teck Resources' Orebody Knowledge team, supporting global exploration and operating mines by combining spectral and geochemical data with advanced data science to drive resource discovery, development, and geometallurgy. She is currently Senior Spectral Geologist at GeoImage and Course Leader for Process Mineralogy. 

Katerina Savinova (UQ) - a geologist specialising in hyperspectral data acquisition, analysis, and integration for mineral identification and mining applications, with 20 years of experience spanning exploration, research, and mining industry. Her expertise includes hyperspectral remote sensing across laboratory, drone, and satellite platforms, high-resolution mineral characterisation and identifying vectors to mineralisation, mineral chemistry, image processing, and data analytics. She contributes to multidisciplinary research at the W.H. Bryan Mining Geology Research Centre within SMI, including EU Horizon Europe and nationally funded projects focused on critical minerals, mine waste and tailings characterisation, and the development of hyperspectral and mineralogical workflows for mining. 

Andres Ortega (UQ) - a joint-PhD researcher under the UQEX partnership, working at the WH Bryan Mining Geology Research Centre (BRC) of the Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland, Australia, and The Camborne School of Mines at The University of Exeter, UK. He completed his undergraduate degree in Mining and Metallurgical Engineering at the National University of Colombia in 2015. He also holds a specialisation in Analytics from the same university and a MSc in Data Science from the Pontifical Javeriana University in Colombia (2023). Before joining BRC as a PhD student in early 2024, Andres worked as a Mining Sustainability Coordinator, where he led the application of Voluntary Sustainability Standards in various mining projects across Latin America.