Speakers, 2025 Dust and Respiratory Health Forum
The full program is here.
 | KEYNOTE: Ken Singer Ken Singer is the Acting Queensland Commissioner for Resources Safety and Health. Ken’s experience in the resources industry spans 4 decades across the coal mining, mineral mining and explosives sectors. As Commissioner, Ken aims to share his experience and knowledge for the benefit of others and one of his key priorities is to keep strengthening existing tripartite industry consultative arrangements between operators, workers and the regulator. |
| Professor of Medicine and Director of Occupational Lung Disease at Northwestern University and for more than 30 years has practiced clinical pulmonary medicine, particulary for diseases related to work-place or environmental exposures. Robert is the Principal Investigator on the Black Lung Center of Excellence as well as the Black Lung Clinics Program |
| Professor Emily Sarver and Lizeth Jaramillo (Lizeth presenting) Professor of Mining and Minerals Engineering, Virginia Tech Her primary research interests include monitoring, characterization and abatement of respirable dust and diesel particulates. Dr. Sarver is currently investigating temporal trends in respirable dust characteristics in US coal mines, the range of respirable silica particle types in mines, and the effects of various dust controls on dust particle size and constituents. Lizeth Jaramillo is a Geological Engineer who earned her degree from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 2018. In 2019, she joined Dr. Emily Sarver’s research group in the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering at Virginia Tech, to pursue a master’s degree focused on characterization of respirable dust using Thermo Gravimetric Analysis. |
 | Research Fellow at the Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre at UQ's Sustainable Minerals Institute. Dr LaBranche specialises in occupational health and safety research for the mining industry. She is currently working on characterisation of dust exposures in the mining and engineered stone work industries and its relation to occupational lung dieseases. |
 | Lead of the Total Deposit Knowledge research group and acting director of the WH Bryan Mining Geology Research Centre at UQ's Sustainable Minerals Insitute. He is currently working on a three-year program: Advancing Dust Exposure Assessment through Enhanced Microscopy-Based Characterisation |
 | Amy is an Organisational Psychologist with extensive experience supporting organisations within the mining industry. She is currently completing her PhD with the University of Queensland, focussing on the return to work experiences of people with occupational lung disease, with a specific focus on silicosis caused by engineered stone manufacturing and installation. |
 | Scott Anderson a diesel fitter and Site Safety and Health Representative at a mine in Queensland. In 2025, he and Dr Nikky Labranche won the Queensland Mining Industry Health & Safety Conference Health Award. |
 | Research Lead for the Occupational Lung Disease Program at Lung Foundation Australia. Lauren's focus currently is to advance lung disease research through strategic initiatives. Lauren is a Chief Investigator on collaborative research projects with Monash University, focused on establishing the national research agenda for occupational lung diseases. She also leads the development of an occupational respiratory rapid response protocol, a systemic tool for disease prevention. |
 | Siqi (Sheila) Sun graduated from UNSW Sydney with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering (Honours Class 1) and is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW. Her research centres on environmental health and occupational safety, with a focus on the toxicological effects of dust generated during the fabrication of engineered stone benchtops and in coal mining on respiratory health. |
 | Yingying Sun is a researcher from the UNSW Water Research Centre and the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She's experienced in oxidative stress and inflammation related cellular dysfunction, especially the pathogenesis investigations on both pulmonary and neural dysfunction. She'll present jointly on some of the early findings stemming from a new project examining the relationships between coal mine - and artificial stone dust particle geochemistry and lung disease – with a particular focus on toxicity assessment. |
 | Dr Lynda Lawson is a Senior Research Fellow in the Global Centre for Mineral Security at the Sustainable Minerals Institute at The University of Queensland (UQ). She is a teacher and knowledge transfer specialist in the extractive industry in Africa, Asia, Australia and South America for the past 13 years. She designed the knowledge transfer component of the Award-Winning Delve Exchange, and the ASM Academy which has already grown to 3000 members across 70 countries. |
 | Dr Rana Sengupta is a leading advocate for mine workers’ rights in India, with nearly three decades dedicated to labor welfare, occupational health, and social justice. Holding a Master’s in Social Work and a PhD on labor in the natural stone supply chain, he was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship in 2009. Sengupta has driven major reforms in Rajasthan, including securing miners’ rights, recognition of silicosis as an epidemic, and the landmark 2019 Pneumoconiosis Policy. |
 | Nana Meeso |
