Sme Awards
By Anonymous
Robert M. Dreyer Award to C. Mark Rebagliati The Robert M. Dreyer Award is presented to C. Mark Rebagliati “For outstanding achievements in international exploration and in recognition for his leadership of the Hunter Dickinson Inc. exploration team in the discoveries of the Mt.Milligan, Kemess South, Xietongmen and Pebble East porphyry copper-gold deposits, Campo Morado as a VMS district and for his lecture “Exploration 101 and a Career in Economic Geology.”
Rebagliati graduated from Michigan Technological University in 1969 with a B.S. in geological engineering. He held positions in Canada with Teck Cominco, Silver Standard Mines, Newconex Canadian Exploration, Saskatchewan Mining Development Corp., Anaconda, Selco and BP Minerals.
In 1986, he formed Rebagliati Geological Consulting based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. As a mineral exploration consultant, Rebagliati formed an association with the Vancouver-based Hunter Dickinson group of companies that has continued for 22 years. In association with Hunter Dickinson, he has been involved in exploration for platinum group elements in South Africa and Brazil and epithermal, massive sulfide and porphyry deposits in North and South America, the Pacific Islands and Asia. He played a leading role in the discovery of the Mt. Milligan, Southern Star and Kemess South porphyry copper-gold deposits in British Columbia; a cluster of polymetallic volcanic hosted massive sulfide deposits at Campo Morado, Mexico; the world-class Pebble East porphyry copper-gold- molybdenum deposit in Alaska and the Xietongman and Newtongmen porphyry copper-gold deposits in China.In 1992, Rebagliati received the British Columbia Chamber of Mines H.H. Huestis award for excellence in mineral exploration. He was named Prospector of the Year in 1997 by the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada and was a co-recipient of itsThayer Lindsely International Discovery Award in 2007.
Individual GEM Award to David R. Gossett
The Individual GEM Award is presented to David R. Gossett for his active role in rejuvenating the Florida section GEM Committee. He recruited committee members and developed an education plan to install interactive mining displays at area elementary schools. He supervised a golf tournament that raised nearly $15,000 to fund the GEM educational projects. He organized and chaired the 22nd Florida Annual Regional Phosphate Conference and recruited U.S. Representative Adam Putnam as the conference keynote speaker.
Gossett is currently the manager of Technical Services for CF Industries in Wauchula, FL. He has been with the company since 1993. He has also worked for Seminole Fertilizer Corp. in Florida and ACZ Inc., Energy Fuels and W.R. Hall in Colorado. He received a B.S. in mining engineering in 1976 from the University of Arizona and an M.S. in engineering management in 1996 from the University of South Florida.
Gossett is a registered professional engineer in Florida. He has served as chair and longtime member of the Professional Engineers Exam Committee, chair of the Florida Annual Regional Phosphate Conference and as a member of the Beneficiation Technical Advisory Committee of the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research.
Student Chapter GEM Award to the University of Kentucky
The Student Chapter GEM Award is presented to the University of Kentucky. The chapter participated in an on-campus academic fair that recruited qualified high school seniors interested in engineering. The chapter also participated in an Engineering Day for middle schools, high schools and families. This event presented an opportunity to raise awareness of the department and the industry with interactive displays of a model front-end loader set up to load coal, a hydrocyclone and other coal mining equipment.
The chapter participated in a coal-related career fair sponsored by Alliance Coal to give area high school students an unbiased perception of the industry. The chapter also visited the third grade at Shearer Elementary school to talk about the job of a coal miner.
The Ivan B. Rahn Education Award to David D. Eyer
The Ivan B. Rahn Education Award is presented to David D. Eyer. The award recognizes an SME member for distinguished contributions to educational activities within SME, such as ABET, student affairs, continuing education, professional registration or the Council of Education.
Dyer received his B.S. in mining engineering from Lehigh University in 1960 and an M.S. from West Virginia University in 1967. All of his mining career was with Consolidation Coal, now Consol Energy. He joined Consol in 1960 as project engineer at the Humphrey Mine. In 1977, he became vice president-engineering, where he remained until his retirement in 1995. He traveled widely to coal and hard rock mining areas in the United States and internationally. In 1990, he became a volunteer mining engineering program evaluator under ABET. He served a five-year term as one of SME’s two commissioners on the ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission. He served as the team chair for many university visits. In 2004, he was the mining engineering program evaluator for the substantial equivalence visit to Middle East Technical Institute in Ankara, Turkey. In 1993, he started the Senior Design Competition, now a joint SME-Pittsburgh section and the Pittsburgh Coal Mining Insti- . tution of America (PCMIA) activity. I He continues as a judge. He was the prime mover in combining the annual SME Pittsburgh section and the PCMIA meetings into a single successful event. Eyer is a registered professional engineer in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida.
Syd S. Peng Ground Control in Mining Award to Winton J. Gale
The Syd S. Peng Ground Control Award is presented to Winton Gale “in recognition of his unrivaled ability to use critical mechanics, observation, field measurements and numerical models to understand complex ground control issues.”
Gale is currently the managing director of Strata Control Technology (SCT) in Wollongong, NSW, Australia. He attended Newcastle University where he obtained B.S. (honors) and Ph.D. degrees in the field of stress analysis and deformation modes within a geological rock mass. From 1982-1986, he worked with the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization, primarily in the Division of Geomechanics. There, he applied and further developed his background knowledge in stress-related rock deformation modes around underground coal mine roadways and extraction panels.
From 1986-1989, he was manager of the strata control group within the Australian Coal Industry Research Laboratories and was a founding member of a consulting and research company, SCT. Gale and his co-workers at SCT have continued consulting and research in the field of rock mechanics applied to underground mining. During this period, the application of computer simulation of rock-failure mechanics to the understanding of problems and development of solutions in mining emerged. The approach used was to include the detail of the geology within the simulations and compare the response with observed behavior and measured cases. This multi- faceted approach has been successful and is applied to roadway reinforcement design, pillar design and longwall support design, together with the subsidence and hydrological implications of strata caving and fracture about longwall panels.
President’s Citation to S. Komar Kawatra
The President’s Citation is presented to S. Komar Kawatra “for his extensive technical contributions and hard work in virtually every capacity for the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration. Kawatra has been a friend to the society, a friend and mentor to his students and a friend and supporter of his colleagues. His quiet, determined competence working with the Minerals and Metallurgical Processing journal, the Mineral and Metallurgical Processing Division, the board and all of his endless other functions have been invaluable to our society.”
Kawatra is a professor of chemical engineering at the Michigan Technological University. His passion is undergraduate education in mineral processing. His experience includes the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Center in Brisbane, Australia, Mount Isa Mines in Australia, the Canada Center for Mineral and Energy Technology in Ottawa, Canada and the Indian Atomic Energy Commission in Trombay, India.
Kawatra has received numerous awards including the Gaudin, Taggart, Richards and Apian awards.
President’s Citation to Robert Shoemaker
The President’s Citation is presented to Robert Shoemaker “in recognition of his unparalleled technical expertise, tireless dedication to SME, notorious constructive curmudgeonry and willingness to constantly question, constantly challenge this business and its participants. Shoemaker has long been our laureate philosopher, mentoring many of the leaders of our industry. For all you have done for SME and all you have done for all of us, we will be forever indebted.”
Shoemaker served in the U.S. Army Engineers in New Guinea, New Britain, four of the Philippine Islands and Japan from 1943-1946. He obtained a B.S. and M.S. in inorganic chemistry from Oregon State College and an M.S. in metallurgical engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He began his career with Union Carbide Research Laboratories in 1953 as a research metallurgist. In 1962, he moved to Bechtel Corp. In 1981, he specialized in consulting on gold and silver extraction as vice president of San Francisco Mining Associates and, in 1984, continued his consulting as R.S. Shoemaker Ltd. at Grass Valley, CA. He retired in 2002. In his engineering work, he was responsible for the design of many minerals processing plants including those for iron, copper, nickel, molybdenum, coal, rare earths, manganese, uranium, gold and silver. Shoemaker has served as president of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, president of SME and as a director of AIME. He received an honorary degree from Montana Tech and the AIME Richards Award. Howard N. Eavenson Award to Thomas J. Lien
The Howard N. Eavenson Award is presented to Thomas J. lien “for his outstanding contribution to the development of large surface mines using the truck/shovel method and optimizing productivity advancements through the use of process management techniques with an emphasis on the participatory management style which is highly dependent on employee involvement.”
Lien received a B.S. in geological engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1965. He began his 40-year mining career with Kennecott Copper in Ray, AZ. He then worked for Kaiser Steel, Mountain States R&D and Amax Coal. In 2001, he was named senior vice president of Amax Western Operations with responsibility for Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. The Belle Ayr and Eagle Butte surface coal mines each received the Sentinels of Safety and top Wyoming safety awards. His Wyoming, Colorado and Utah operations received national and state awards for excellence in reclamation and for their environmental stewardship. They were leaders in the development of western reclamation techniques. He retired in 2005 from Foundation Coal but continues to consult nationally and internationally.
Lien was a charter member and chair of SME’s Powder River Basin section and president and board member of the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute (RMCMI). He served on the boards of the Wyoming Mining Association, the Western Research Institute and the Wyoming Heritage Society. He continues to be active in SME, the RMCMI, the Colorado Mining Association and the Denver Coal Club. lien has written and presented papers on Powder River Basin mining, clean coal technology, heavy-media separation and mining technology.
Ben F. Dickerson III Award to Frederick T. Graybeal
The Ben F. Dickerson III Award is presented to Frederick T. Graybeal.The award recognizes professionalism and contributions to the mining industry.
Graybeal received a B.A. in geology from Dartmouth College in 1960, followed by M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arizona. He taught economic geology for one year as an instructor at the University of Arizona. He then held various positions in the mining industry, principally with Asarco, as an exploration geologist for base and precious metals. In 2003, he retired from Asarco where he had been chief geologist since 1980. He then joined Maximus Ventures, a Toronto venture exchange-listed company, as president and chief executive officer. He retired again in 2006. Graybeal is a member of SME, the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG), the Geological Society of America, the American Geological Society, the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada. He has worked on committees for several of those groups and is a past vice president of the SEG. He has also served on two committees of the National Research Council, on geoscience advisory boards of several universities and has published on scientific and professional subjects. Currently, he consults and participates in a porphyry copper research project in Arizona with the U. S. Geological Survey. He is a director or advisor to several public exploration and mining companies.
Percy Nicholls Award to Peter J. Bethell
The Percy Nicholls Award is presented to Peter J. Bethell. “engineer, organizer and administrator and outstanding leader in the coal industry. Peter has made important and lasting impressions on design of coal-utilization equipment to use a wider range of coals.”
Bethell obtained a first class B.S. (honors) degree in mining engineering and a Ph.D. in fine coal separation from Nottingham University in England. He is a graduate of the Executive Program at the Darden Business School of the University of Virginia. He has spent the last 25 years working in the energy and minerals industry in senior processing and management positions in the United States and Australia. He has been responsible for oil and gas, timber and mine supply companies, as well as running longwall and surface coal mines. He has been responsible for the design, optimization and efficient operation of coal processing plants for Pittston, Massey and Cyprus Amax. Bethell joined Arch Coal as director of preparation in 2004. He has successfully completed major plant upgrades at all of Arch’s processing facilities, generating substantial economic benefits – 400 kt/a (440,000 stpy) additional coal recovery. He has also been involved in the design, construction and commissioning of the new Cardinal and Castle Valley plants. The development of best practices in Arch Coal’s processing plants has been a key focus. He has been instrumental in the initial application and further development of column flotation and spiral circuitry in the U.S. coal industry.
Rock Mechanics Award to John F. Abel Jr.
The Rock Mechanics Award is presented to John F. Abel Jr. “in recognition of an outstanding career as an educator in teaching the application of rock mechanics to a generation of engineers and significant contributions to the application of rock mechanics to tunneling and openpit and underground mine design.”
Abel completed one year in the geological engineering program at Colorado College before his National Guard unit was called to duty in the Korean War. He used the Korean GI Bill to enroll in the mining engineering program at the Colorado School of Mines and graduated in 1956. He went to Greenland on a project to enlarge and extend the Greenland ice tunnel. On his return, he went to work full- time for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE). His first paper, “Ice Tunneling in Greenland,” was published in Mining Engineering. During his time with the Corps, he wrangled a one-man, half-pay TDY assignment in Golden, CO to write a COE report on ice tunnel closure phenomena and to finish the master’s degree he had started at CSM.
Abel joined Thompson Creek Coal and Coke as a mine engineer and then spent six months as a junior lecturer in metalliferous mining at King’s College. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. He returned home and installed rock mechanics instrumentation in the Straight Creek tunnel pilot bore with Terrametrics. In 1964, he returned to CSM for the doctoral program, which he completed in 1966. He subsequently taught rock mechanics and other courses for eight years in the Department of Mining and Geological Engineering at the University of Arizona. He joined the Mining Engineering Department at CSM and taught for 18 years. During that time, he worked parts of 10 summers as the research mining engineer for the Engineering Geology Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey. He retired from teaching in 1992 but continues to work as a consultant.
Antoine M. Gaudin Award to Thomas W. Healy
The Antoine M. Gaudin Award is presented to Thomas W Healy “for his innovative contributions to fundamental colloid and surface chemistry and their applications to mineral processing and related areas.”
Healy received bachelor and masters degrees in chemistry and metallurgy from the University of Melbourne (UM). He completed a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1963 at Columbia University. He joined the University of California, Berkeley as a lecturer-research fellow in materials science, then returned to Australia in 1965 as a Queen Elizabeth II fellow.
In 1977, Healy became professor of physical chemistry at the UM and built an internationally recognized major research group. From 1991-1999. he was director of the Advanced Minerals Products Center, which spanned the departments of chemistry, chemical engineering and mathematics. Healy has written more than 200 publications and supervised 50 higher degree students. He was elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1984 and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering in 1991. In 1999, he was awarded the Wark Medal of the Australian Academy of Science and was the 1999 Lady Masson Lecturer of the UM. Upon his retirement in 1999, he was appointed professor emeritus and deputy director of the ongoing Australian Research Council’s Special Research Center, the Particulate Fluids Processing Center. He has been a principal of Colloid Consultants for more than 20 years, providing technical consulting to many Australian and international companies.
Daniel Cowan Jackling Award to Mark N. Savit
The Daniel Cowan Jackling Award is presented to Mark N. Savit “for his outstanding leadership and contribution in elevating the liability awareness and responsibility of thousands of supervisors, engineers and professionals in the mining industry; and for his lecture.’Dysfunction Junction: When Inalterable Regulations Meet Evolving Technology.’”
Savit received his B.A. in philosophy from the University of Southern California in 1970. After a year of graduate school, he was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) to make educational safety and health videos. He received extensive training through the USBM and the industry on mining and mine safety and health. In 1972, Savit took part in rescue efforts at the Sunshine Mine fire and captured video of the rescue of the only two survivors. That video was recently released as part of the film. You Are My Sunshine, a documentary of the fire and the rescue. Shortly thereafter, Savit was put in charge of the Special Investigation Unit of the U.S.Mine Safety and Health Administration’s predecessor, the Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration (MESA). While working for the USBM and MESA, Savit attended Georgetown University Law Center at night and received his J.D. degree in 1976. He has been, among other things, advising and representing mining companies and miners ever since. He is currently the managing partner of the Denver, CO office of Patton Boggs, LLP. Arthur F. Taggart Award to J.T. Hollow, E.M. Hill, H.K. Lin and D.E. Walsh
The Arthur F. Taggart Award is presented to J.T. Hollow, E. M. Hill. H. K. Lin and D. E. Walsh for their paper entitled “Modeling the influence of slurry temperature on gold leach and adsorption kinetics at the Fort Knox Mine, Fairbanks. Alaska,” published in the Minerals and Metallurgical Processing journal, August 2006.
Eric M. Hill is currently a student at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF) completing a B.S. in mining engineering and an M.S. in mineral processing. Hill has more than 18 years of experience in hard rock mining, engineering and production, processing and openpit operations. Previous employers have included Amax’s Sleeper Mine, Santa Fe Pacific’s Twin Creeks Mine (now Newmont) and Kinross’ Fort Knox Mine.
Hsing K. Lin earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in mining engineering at ChengKung University in 1974 and 1978, respectively. He earned an M.S. degree in mineral preparation engineering from UAF in 1980 and earned his Ph.D. in metallurgy from the University of Utah in 1985. He joined the Mineral Industry Research Laboratory at UAF in 1986 and has remained an employee of the university. He is currently a professor and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses. His research interests include minerals and metallurgical processing, electrochemistry and waste treatments. He holds six U.S. patents and has published more than 80 professional articles and reports.
Daniel E. Walsh is a professor of mineral preparation engineering at UAF and a registered professional engineer in Alaska. He currently serves on the State of Alaska Board of Registration for Architects, Engineers and Land Surveyors, a member board of the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying. Walsh joined the Mineral Industry Research Laboratory at UAF in 1982. He has been with the UAF for 26 years and currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in mining engineering and mineral preparation engineering, respectively. His research interests include gravity concentration, plant design, coal-water fuel production, coal drying, coal utilization, precious metals recovery and comminution.
Biographical information on J.T. Hollow was not available.
Milton E. Wadsworth Extractive Metallurgy Award to Randolph E. Scheffel
The Milton E. Wadsworth Extractive Metallurgy Award is presented to Randolph E. Scheffel “in recognition of his contributions in the field of industrial hydrometallurgy that advance our understanding of leach kinetics and improved recovery of nonferrous metals.”
Scheffel received a B.S. degree in metallurgical engineering in 1970 and an M.S. degree in hydrometallurgy in 1972 from the University of Utah. He began his career at Ranchers Exploration and Development’s Bluebird copper mine, Miami, AZ, in 1972. The Bluebird Mine was the world’s first commercial, stand-alone copper heap leach, solvent extraction/electrowinning operation.
During his 12-year career with Ranchers, Scheffel was involved in conventional, in-place and in situ leaching projects, gaining valuable insight into the commercial economics and practical constraints of such endeavors. He has testing, design and operating experience in the heap leaching of copper, precious metals, uranium/ vanadium, nickel/cobalt and nitrate/iodine ores. Through his consulting practice, Scheffel has assisted in the project development and process improvements for many of the heap leach projects developed in South America, Australia and Southeast Asia during the last 16 years.
Stefanko Best Paper Award to S. Hennings, J. Sandford and S. Thomson
The Stefanko Best Paper award is presented to Steven W Hennings, Jim Sandford and Scott Thomson for their paper, “A Petroleum Industry Approach to Coal Mine Gas Drainage” preprinted and presented at the 2007 SME Annual Meeting in Denver, CO.
Hennings is a senior engineer and project manager at Norwest Questa Engineering. He has more than 25 years of domestic and international experience in a variety of reservoir and production engineering roles. Hennings specializes in development and exploration evaluations for gas and oil. His primary focus for the past seven years has been on all phases of coalbed methane and coal- mine methane development and on reviving mature oil and gas fields. Hennings holds a bachelors degree in petroleum engineering and a masters degree in finance.
Sandford is manager of mining engineering for Xstrata Coal NSW. He has 30 years of experience in underground coal operations. For the last 10 years, Sandford has played a key role in developing the underground mining strategy for the Bulga complex. The focus was on securing planning approvals for new operations and the development of new technologies to improve productivity. Prior to emigrating to Australia in 1994, Sandford worked for British Coal. He has also worked at the German Creek Mine and at the Beltana Mine as technical services and project manager. He has a degree in mining engineering from Nottingham University.
Thomson is managing director, for Norwest Energy Consultants. He has more than 29 years of experience in coal seam geology, exploration and the practical application of geophysical methods to mine problems. He has worked as a private consultant in the resource industry since 1998 specializing in coal seam gas and technology development.
Thomson has managed several small service businesses in addition to being involved in the development of advanced geological, drilling and geophysical technologies. During the past 10 years, his focus has been on private consulting and research activities related to coal seam gas, geology and drilling technology.Thomson holds a bachelors and a masters degree, plus a masters degree in business administration.
Robert Peele Memorial Award to Edgar J. Urbaez
The Robert Peele Memorial Award is presented to Edgar J. Urbaez for his paper, “Optimizing Reserves in Complex Multiple Blend Products,” published in Mining Engineering, August 2006.
Urbaez earned bachelors and masters degrees in mining engineering from the Colorado School of Mines (CSM). He has more than 10 years of experience working in openpit and underground mining operations, planning and project development in North, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South Africa. As a specialist in mine planning engineering, he has worked in openpit and underground mine operations management, planning, optimization, and design. His experience has been used in feasibility studies, due diligence, technical audits and directly assisting mining operations. Urbaez has also been involved with strategic planning and corporate decision making regarding project development and optimizing mining and process alternatives. He uses computer-aided, mine planning techniques and has developed mine planning methodologies and techniques for each specific operation. He has experience in gold, coal, nickel, copper, zinc, bauxite, iron ore and industrial minerals mining projects.
Coal & Energy Division’s Distinguished Service Award to J. Steven Gardner
The Coal & Energy Division’s Distinguished Service Award is presented to J. Steven Gardner for achievements in the coal mining industry. Gardner is president and chief executive officer of Engineering Consuiting Services, headquartered in Lexington, KY. During his 30+ year career, he has worked as an engineer and manager in mining operations and consulting engineering and served on a mine rescue team. His consulting practice focuses on energy, natural resources, the environment, health and safety, sensitive land-use issues and industrial heritage projects.
Gardner is a licensed professional engineer in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Tennessee and a licensed professional surveyor in West Virginia. He serves as vice chair of the Kentucky State Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. He co-edited the Coal Mining Reference Book published by the Kentucky Mining Institute. The book is used by the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing as a study guide for the mine foreman’s exam.
Gardner holds a B.S. degree in biosystems and agricultural engineering and an M.S. degree in mining engineering from the University of Kentucky. He has also earned a graduate level environmental systems certificate.
Industrial Minerals Division’s A. Frank Alsobrook Distinguished Service Award to Jessica Elzea Kogel
The Industrial Minerals Division’s A. Frank Alsobrook Distinguished Service award is presented to Jessica Elzea Kogel. The award recognizes members who have significantly contributed to the workings of SME and the Industrial Minerals Division (IndMD) and have an outstanding reputation for professionalism and accomplishment.
Kogel is the minerals resource development manager for Imerys in Sandersville. GA. She is responsible for kaolin exploration and mineral development for paper applications. She received a B.S. in earth science from the University of California, Berkeley and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from Indiana University. She has been a member in SME for 20 years and is currently serving a second term on the SME Board of Directors. She has held numerous leadership positions at SME, including membership on the Governance Strategic Committee and the Executive Committee. She has chaired the Program Committee for the 2001 SME Annual Meeting, the Student Member Affairs Committee and the SME Council of Education and Accreditation. Kogel has also served the IndMD on numerous committees and as chair of the division in 2001. She has participated in the organization of two Dreyer Conferences. She was a member of the steering committee for the first Dreyer Conference on Global Kaolin Resources and the second Dreyer Conference on the Geology and Markets for Value-Added Carbonate Minerals. Most recently, she served as senior editor of the seventh edition of Industrial Minerals and Rocks. Environmental Division’s Distinguished Service Award to Frederick B. Henderson III
The Environmental Division’s Distinguished Service Award is presented to Frederick B. Henderson III.The award recognizes members who have significantly contributed to the workings of SME and the Environmental Division and have an outstanding reputation for professionalism and accomplishment.
Henderson has a B.S. in geology and an M.S. in petroleum geology from Stanford and a Ph.D. in economic geology and geochemistry for Harvard. He served in U.S. Navy from 1957-1959. He was employed by St. Joe Lead and Kaiser Aluminum as a mining and exploration geologist in North and South America from 1965 to 1972, then worked on geothermal geochemistry at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories from 1974 to 1976.
Henderson co-founded and was president of the Geosat Committee from 1976-1993.The committee was supported by 150 major international petroleum, mining and engineering companies. Geosat voiced industry’s needs and demonstrated capabilities for improved satellite sensing for geological and oceanographie applications. Since 1993, he has been a fulltime partner with Hendco Services, which provides exploration, remote sensing, mining environmental and geothermal services. He also works as a chief scientist for Mt. Princeton Geothermal, developing a geothermal energy program in Chaffee County, CO.
Henderson was a founding director of the Environmental Division and served as its secretary, vice chair and chair. He also served for two years on the SME Board of Directors. In addition, he served twice as an SME Henry Krumb Lecturer.
Mining & Exploration Division’s Distinguished Service Award to Jean-Michel Rendu
The Mining & Exploration Division’s (M&E) Distinguished Service Award is presented to Jean-Michel Rendu for his outstanding contributions to the M&E Division.
Rendu is an independent consultant supplying services to the international mining industry in mine planning, ore control, mine- to-mill reconciliation and the estimation and public reporting of mineral resources and mineral reserves. Rendu started his consultancy in 2001 when he retired from the position of vice president. Resources and Mine Planning at Newmont Mining. In this position, he had worldwide responsibility for Newmont’s mining engineering and reserve estimation and reporting activities. Before joining Newmont in 1988. Rendu served as an associate with Golder Associates in Denver, CO, a professor of mining engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and head of operations research with Anglovaal in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Rendu is an Ingenieur des Mines from Ecole des Mines de Saint Etienne (France), and has M.S. and Eng.Sc.D. degrees from the Krumb School of Mines, Columbia University. He is the author of 50 technical publications including a textbook on geostatistics. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a registered member and past director of SME, a recipient of the Jackling Award and two SME Presidential Citations and was a Henry Krumb Lecturer. He is a fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.
Coal & Energy Division’s J.W. Woomer Young Engineer Award to Timothy W. Beck
The Coal & Energy Division’s J.W.Woomer Young Engineer Award is presented to Timothy W. Beck in recognition of his engineering professionalism in the coal industry.
Beck was active in the student chapter at the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) and served as membership chair. He also participated on UMR’s student mine rescue team that competed suecessfully in several regional tournaments. In 2000, he earned his B.S. degree in mining engineering from UMR and went to work at TXU Mining’s Big Brown Mine in Fairfield, TX. As part of the TXU training program, he rotated through different departments. As an associate engineer and operations engineer, he worked on multiple projects related to improving operations at the surface lignite mine.
In 2003, Beck joined the National Occupational Safety and Health’s Respiratory Hazard Control Branch in Pittsburgh, PA. As a researcher, he has conducted field and laboratory evaluations of dust control technologies in underground coal mining. Tasks have included parameter testing of conventional dust suppression systems, field evaluations of wethead continuous miner cutting drums, development of a fresh air curtain for roof bolter personnel and the application of water-powered scrubbers to underground mining equipment. Results of his research have been published in the proceedings of US./North American Mine Ventilation symposia and in the Journal of the Mine Ventilation Society of South Africa.
The Industrial Mineral Division’s Young Scientist Award to Aaron M. McMahon
The Industrial Mineral Division’s Young Scientist Award is presented to Aaron M. McMahon. The award recognizes scientific professionalism in the industrial minerals industry.
McMahon graduated from James Madison University in 1998 with a degree in geology. Following a one year internship at the U.S. Geological Survey, he attended Arizona State University and received a masters degree in geology in 2001, He began his work in the industrial minerals field with Oglebay Norton. There, he conducted exploration, resource estimation and ore-quality control projects.
Currently, McMahon is a geologist for Pincock, Alien & Holt in Lakewood, CO where he provides mining consulting services to the industrial minerals, coal and metals industries. He is a registered professional geologist in California. He currently serves as a vice chair on the Industrial Minerals Technical Committee.
The Mining & Exploration Division’s Outstanding Young Professional Award to Eben D. Robinson
The Mining & Exploration Division’s Outstanding Young Professional Award is presented to Eben D. Robinson. Ine award recognizes meritorious accomplishments while working in the mining and exploration industries.
Robinson graduated from the University of Arizona in 2000 with a B.S. degree in mining engineering. During college, he worked in mine operations as an equipment operator at Asarco’s Silverbell Mine and at the university’s experimental underground mine. He was voted the class of 2000′s Outstanding Senior in Mining Engineering by the university faculty.
Upon graduation, Robinson joined IMC Potash in Carlsbad, NM. At IMC (later Mosaic), he worked in mine engineering and as a shift foreman. He served for four years on the mine rescue team, oversaw all aspects of an infill drilling program, headed up continuous improvement efforts and generated the annual life-of-mine and ventilation plans. As a shift foreman, he was accountable for five continuous miner faces spread over 27 km (17 miles) of belt line. He also served a term as chair of the local section of SME. In 2005, he moved back to Tucson to join the Phelps Dodge Mine Technology Group. He was placed into the haulage program to evaluate and implement new technologies, as well as to optimize existing fleets in the Phelps Dodge mines.
In 2006, Robinson was promoted to program manager of haulage, and currently works there for Freeport-McMoRan Mining. Robinson is chair of the Tucson section of SME, serves on the Industry Leadership Board for the Department of Mining Engineering at the University of Arizona and is a session chair at the 2008 Annual Meeting.
The Mineral and Metallurgical Processing Division’s Outstanding Young Engineer Award to Peter Amelunxen
The Mineral and Metallurgical Processing Division’s Outstanding Young Engineer Award is presented to Peter Amelunxen in recognition of his significant contributions within the mineral processing/ extractive discipline.
Amelunxen studied mining engineering at the University of Arizona. In 1998, he joined the Minnovex Technologies comminution team in Toronto, ON, Canada and, as part of a masters degree in mineral processing with McGiII University, he worked on grinding circuit modeling and point-hardness testing methods. His efforts contributed to the development of costeffective, geostatistics- based ore characterization methods that have been used in the design process for many new concentrators.He joined the Phelps Dodge team in Bagdad, AZ in 2003 to drive the integration of the Knowledgescape expert system. During his Bagdad tenure, he worked closely with CiDRA Corp. to develop a gas holdup meter for flotation cell control. He developed a fondness for operations as the general foreman of the Bagdad mill. During this period, he presented and published a paper in the Minerals and Metallurgical Processing journal. In 2005, he transferred to Phelps Dodge’s molybdenum division and collaborated with the company’s process technology center to work on alternative moly oxidation methods. His efforts yielded a patent application for Phelps Dodge and earned him the first-ever chief executive officer’s Exceptional Performance Award, which he shared with fellow researcher, John Wilmot.
In 2007, Amelunxen was appointed mill operations superintendent at Cerro Verde and has been a key member of the ramp-up team that took the new concentrator to design production levels.
Copyright Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc. Feb 2008
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