Evolutionary and Revolutionary Technologies for Mining (2002)

Milton H. Ward (chair), president of Ward Resources, Inc. was previously president and chief executive officer of Cyprus Amax Minerals Company, president and chief operating officer of Freeport Minerals Company, and an officer of a number of other public companies. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his leadership in developing, building, and operating major mineral production facilities in remote and challenging environments. He is currently a member of the advisory board of the Geoscience and Environmental Center, Sandia National Laboratories. Dr. Ward is former chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Mining Congress (predecessor to the National Mining Association). He served on Tulane University’s Board of Administrators and as the Advisory Committee chairman for Tulane University Bioenvironmental Research Center. He received a B.S. and M.S. in mining engineering from the University of Alabama, an M.B.A. from the University of New Mexico, a Ph.D. from the University of London Royal School of Mining, and an honorary Ph.D. from the Colorado School of Mines.

Jonathan G. Price (vice-chair) is state geologist and director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology. He was president of the American Institute of Professional Geologists in 1997 and is president of the Association of American State Geologists for 2000–2001. His prior experience includes positions with the Anaconda Company; U.S. Steel Corporation; Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin; and the National Research Council (NRC). His research and publications address mineral resources, geology and geochemistry of ore deposits, igneous petrology, tectonics, geologic hazards, geologic mapping, environmental geochemistry, and solution mining. He was a member of the NRC Board on Earth Sciences and Resources panel that produced Mineral Resources and Society: A Review of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Mineral Resource Surveys Program Plan (1996) and Hardrock Mining on Federal Lands (1999).

Robert Ray Beebe, a consultant based in Tucson, Arizona, is a retired executive of both Homestake Mining Company and Newmont Mining Corporation. He received his B.S. and M.S. in metallurgical engineering from Montana School of Mines and holds that institution’s Silver and Gold Medals. Early in his career, he taught at several mining schools and did research at the Mines Experiment Station of the University of Minnesota and Battelle Memorial Institute. He is a distinguished member of the Society of Mining Engineers, a member of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, a member and past president of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. His areas of expertise include mining and mineral processing of ferrous and nonferrous metals. He has chaired the Bureau of Mines Advisory Board, the Mineral Engineering Advisory Committee of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Mineral Engineering Advisory Committee of Montana Tech. He is also a director at the National Advanced Drilling and Excavation Technologies Institute. A long-time NRC volunteer, Mr. Beebe has served on the National Materials Advisory Board and a number of committees, most recently as joint chair of the Committee on the Impact of Selling the National Helium Reserve.

Corale L. Brierley, an independent consultant, was chief of environmental process development at Newmont Mining Corporation, president of Advanced Mineral Technologies Inc., and chemical microbiologist, New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources. Her research interests include biogenic extractive metallurgy, biological treatment methods for inorganic wastes, and thermophilic chemautotrophic microorganisms. She is the author of 70 publications and holds 5 patents in the field of biotechnology applications in mineral processing and waste treatment. She served on the NRC Committee on Research Programs of the U.S. Bureau of Mines and the Committee on Ground Water Recharge. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for “innovations in applying biotechnology to mine production

and remediation.” Dr. Brierley obtained a B.S. and M.S. in biology and chemistry, respectively, from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and a Ph.D. in environmental sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Larry Costin, who has been with Sandia National Laboratories since 1978, is manager of the Geomechanics Department. Major areas of research and development in which he has been involved include static and dynamic fracture and fragmentation of brittle rock, constitutive modeling of brittle damaging materials, localization and shear banding in metals under dynamic loading, finite element modeling of rock structures using advanced constitutive models, design and fielding of large-scale in-situ geotechnical tests, and design and analysis of nuclear waste repository systems. He also has experience in management of large projects, application of quality assurance (NQA-1) standards to laboratory and field testing, environmental remediation, and hazardous waste management. He earned his Ph.D. in solid mechanics from Brown University.

Thomas Falkie, now chairman of Berwind Natural Resources Corporation, was the director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, U.S. Department of the Interior (1974–1977). From 1969 to 1974, he was the head and chairman of the Mineral Engineering Department at Pennsylvania State University. From 1961 to 1969 he was employed by the International Minerals and Chemicals Corporation. Dr. Falkie obtained his Ph.D. in mining engineering from Pennsylvania State University. He was on the Advisory Committee on Mining and Mineral Resources Research, U.S. Department of the Interior, is past president of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, and past president of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration. He is a member of the board of the National Mining Association and chairman of the American Coal Foundation. Dr. Falkie is the author of more than 200 publications, including book chapters and handbooks. He has received numerous awards and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Norman L. Greenwald, now president of Norm Greenwald Associates in Tucson, Arizona, has also held positions at Woodward-Clyde Consultants, Newmont Mining Corporation, and Magma Copper Company. He has extensive experience in all aspects of environmental regulations and compliance: air quality; surface and ground water quality; management of hazardous and solid waste; environmental auditing, compliance, and management planning; legislative and regulatory development processes at both the state and federal levels. He received his M.S. in soil-water chemistry from the University of Arizona.

Kenneth N. Han is Regents Distinguished Professor and Douglas W. Fuerstenau Professor in the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T). He obtained his B.S. and M.S. from Seoul National University and his Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Upon finishing his doctorate, Dr. Han joined the Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia, as lecturer and senior lecturer. He began his career at SDSM&T in 1981, and has been head of the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and dean of the College of Materials Science and Engineering. His research interests include hydrometallurgy, interfacial phenomena, metallurgical kinetics, solution chemistry, fine particle recovery, and electrometallurgy. He has published more than 130 papers in international journals and presented more than 100 papers at international conferences. Dr. Han is the author of 9 monographs and holds 8 patents. He has received numerous awards from academic, and technical, and professional societies. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Dr. Han is currently a member of the Committee on Engineering Education for the National Research Council.

Murray Hitzman has been with Colorado School of Mines since 1996. Prior to this, he spent 11 years in the minerals industry. In addition to discovering the carbonate-hosted Lisheen Zn-Pb-Ag deposit in Ireland, he worked on porphyry copper and other intrusive-related deposits, precious metal systems, volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits, sediment-hosted Zn-Pb and Cu deposits, and iron oxide Cu-U-Au-LREE deposits throughout the world. For two years, he worked in Washington, D.C., first in the U.S. Senate and later in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, on environmental and natural resource issues. He has received numerous awards and published approximately 70 papers. His current interests focus on deposit-scale and district-scale studies of metallic ore systems. Deposit-scale studies examine the genesis of ore deposits through detailed field work and careful laboratory research to characterize the geologic setting of deposits and determine alteration and mineralization events. District-scale investigations involve geologic mapping to determine the tectonic and structural factors important in localizing mineral deposits and to evaluate regional-scale fluid flow and the geochemical processes involved in mineral deposit formation. He received his Ph.D. degree in geology from Stanford University.

Glenn Miller is currently director of the Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, and professor in the Department of Environmental and Resources Sciences. His areas of interest include the fate and transport of organic compounds in soils and the atmosphere, the closure of precious-metals mines, and the treatment of acid mine waste drainage. He has been active in several environmental organizations related to mining during the past 20 years. He received his Ph.D. in agricultural chemistry from the University of California at Davis.

Dr. Miller was a member of the NRC Committee on Risk Assessment of Methyl Bromide and a reviewer of Regulations Affecting Mining on Public Lands (1999).

Raja V. Ramani holds the Anne B. and George H. Deike, Jr., Chair in Mining Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. A graduate of the Indian School of Mines, he holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in mining engineering from Penn State, where he has been on the faculty since 1970. His research activities include flow mechanisms of air, gas, and dust in mining environs, innovative mining methods, and health, safety, productivity, and environmental issues in the mineral industry. He has published more than 200 research papers, contributed to 25 books, and edited the proceedings of 15 national and international symposiums. He has been a consultant to the United Nations and the World Bank and has received numerous awards from academia and technical and professional societies. He was the 1995 president of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration and served on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Mine Health Research Advisory Committee (1991–1998). Dr. Ramani was the chair of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Post Disaster Survival and Rescue (1979–1981), and a member of the Health Research Panel of the NAS Committee on Research Programs of the U.S. Bureau of Mines (1994). He was a member of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Advisory Board to the director of U.S. Bureau of Mines (1995) and a member of the secretary of labor’s Advisory Committee on the Elimination of Coal Worker’s Pneumoconiosis (1995–1996).

John E. Tilton is the William J. Coulter Professor of Mineral Economics in the Division of Economics and Business at the Colorado School of Mines and a university fellow at Resources for the Future. He is a former director of the Division of Economics and Business and a past president of the Mineral Economics and Management Society. His teaching and research interests over the past 30 years have focused on economic and policy issues associated with the metal industries and markets. His recent research has focused on the environment and mining, material substitution, long-run trends in metal demand, the recycling of metals, the sources of productivity growth in mining, and changes in comparative advantage in metal trade. He worked for a year as an Economic Affairs Officer for the Mineral and Metals Branch of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Switzerland and spent two years at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria directing a research program on mineral trade and markets. More recently, he has been a visiting fellow at Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C.; a senior Fulbright scholar at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines in Paris; and a visiting scholar at the Centro de Mineria at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago. Dr. Tilton also served on various NRC boards and committees, most recently on the Panel on Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting.

Robert Bruce Tippin is the research director of the Minerals Research Laboratory and adjunct professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University. He has more than 30 years of experience worldwide in the technical management of mineral-related activities, including applied research, conceptual development, design, engineering, and project management from construction through start-up. He also has five years of plant operating experience. Processes that he has been been involved with include a variety of commodities, including salt, potash, gold, copper, uranium, clay, bauxite, numerous industrial minerals, aggregates, and recycled metal recovery. Dr. Tippin is the author of more than 50 technical publications and has served on committees for various professional organizations. He received his M.S. in mineral engineering from the University of Alabama and his Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from the University of Minnesota.

Rong-Yu Wan is manager of metallurgical research at Newmont Mining Corporation and adjunct professor in the Metallurgical Engineering Department, College of Mines and Earth Sciences of the University of Utah. Prior to this, she was research professor in the Metallurgical Engineering Department of the University of Utah, supervisor and chief of the Extractive Metallurgical Division, Beijing General Research Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and project manager for Beijing Mineral Processing Research Institute. She earned her B.S. in chemical engineering from Chiao Tung University, China, and her Ph.D. in metallurgy and metallurgical engineering from the University of Utah. In addition to directing research and development projects, she has done both fundamental and applied research in mineral processing and chemical metallurgical processes and has developed numerous innovative technologies. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Tamara L. Dickinson is a senior staff officer for the NRC Board on Earth Sciences and Resources. She has served as program director for the Petrology and Geochemistry Program in the Division of Earth Sciences at the National Science Foundation and as discipline scientist for the Planetary Materials and Geochemistry Program at NASA Headquarters. As a postdoctoral fellow at the NASA Johnson Space Center, she conducted experiments on the origin and evolution of lunar rocks and highly reduced igneous meteorites. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in geology from the University of New Mexico and a B.A. in geology from the University of Northern Iowa.