Summer and Winter Research Programs for Undergraduates

10 weeks duration, 20–36 hours per week.

On-site attendance at the St Lucia campus is preferred, however, a remote working arrangement could be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The transition away from fossil fuels is one of Australia’s greatest contemporary challenges. The lack of a cohesive climate and energy policy roadmap to date has led to divisive conversations in societal, business and
political circles. 

Several important questions are being raised. These include, for example, what does decarbonising Australia’s electricity mean for regions and
communities that host climate-intensive coal-fired power plants? How can such large-scale, permanent transitions be undertaken so that the socioeconomic and ecological vitality of many of Australia’s rural/ regional towns and communities be sustained over time?

The media has no doubt been influential in shaping Australia’s climate and energy conversations and identifying conflicts, often ideological but also
practical. Yet, there is little understanding of how its framing of public perceptions about these conflicts may influence policy regionally and nationally. 

With a new federal government in power, Australia’s climate and energy policy is likely to see some development, including uplifting national climate ambitions and bringing the momentum needed to undertake this transition. It will also generate extensive media coverage and, therefore, rich data to collate, and analyse.

This project aims to document how the media supports or disrupts the framing of Australia’s energy and climate narrative.

• work in a supportive research environment where their project will complement CSRM’s existing research on the topic
• build skills in discourse analysis
• gain research writing experience
• work with senior academics to generate publications from the research
• build communication and presentation skills by delivering an oral presentation at the end of the project to share findings

The project is suitable for an applicant with a background in journalism, mass communication or social science.

Prior experience with media discourse analysis would be an advantage.

Students keen to undertake an Honours thesis on a related topic are encouraged to apply.

This project will contribute to a large SMI research project called “Fire resilience of Temperate Highland Peat Swamps on Sandstone (THPSS)”. One of the objectives of that project is to develop understanding of the effect of fire and its severity on THPSS soil, hydrology and the post fire recovery process of these swamps.

THPSS typically have a high resilience to fire at wet conditions, due to their usually high soil moisture, and ability to support rapid vegetation re-growth. However, THPSS of Sydney Basin overlie underground coal mining area that may affect hydrology of swamps due to an increase in swamp drainage. THPSS of Sydney Basin was severely affected by wildfires during the fire season 2019-2020. Most burnt swamps lost their surface organic matter layers (fibrous or spongy organic-rich detritus). In the most severely burnt swamps (very high or high burn severity burn class), the upper portion of the peat layers (called the alternating organic sands layer) also incinerated. Fires can alter soil physio-chemical properties. However, the effect of bushfires on THPSS that have been undermined is not understood. 

The successful applicant will work on the physical, chemical and hydrological analysis of pre- and post-fire soil samples collected from these swamps and develop an understanding of the effect of fire and its severity on THPSS soil and hydrology. 

The candidate will benefit from this project by being exposed to high-quality applied research in the mining context, and by potentially becoming a co-author in a manuscript to be published in an international journal.

This project can be the start of a larger research project, such as Honours or PhD.

This project is open to students with an interest in soil physics, with strong laboratory skills and the ability and enthusiasm to learn and apply new equipment and tools. Ideal candidates would be Masters, 3rd or 4th year students of Soil, Environmental, Earth or Agricultural Sciences, or Civil/Environmental Engineering.

This research project is focused on building a case study in the suite of simulation packages in Dassault Systems to enable simulation and optimisation of Mine to Mill. The model will cover geological modelling, blast and blast movement modelling, load and haul monitoring and dynamic simulation of the processing plant.

The project will focus on transferring JKMRC dynamic models into the Dassault Systems Dynamol platform and establishing the link between packages which can model each stage of the mining process.  The model will then be used to perform a case study.

In this process, the candidate will work closely with JKMRC researchers and the Technical team from Dassault Systems to deliver the project while the candidate gains practical experience with Dassault Systems simulation platforms and JKMRC dynamic models.

The successful applicant will receive training in the use of Dassault System simulation packages and JKMRC dynamic models. The applicant will also be supervised by world-leading researchers at JKMRC and a highly-skilled technical team of Dassault Systems, a world-leading company offering software solutions to industry.

This project is suitable for students who are comfortable with learning new software packages and have programming skills, and who desire to enhance their programming skills.

Previous experience with modelling and simulation software is desirable.

Professor Mohsen Yanyaei - JKMRC
Dr Farhad Faramarzi - Dassault Systems

Background
Global demand for minerals and metals, particularly copper and gold, has risen and is forecast to continue rising in the decades to come. Indeed, Batterham (2017) quotes that demand in 2050 will be double that in 2015. The quality of deposits of these materials is decreasing, with them tending to be located at greater depths, be hosted in harder rock matrices, be of lower grade and of a more complex, finer grained and disseminated mineralogy. As such, the costs of processing these deposits, to enable extraction of the valuable metals, have increased and will continue to do so unless novel technologies to reduce costs are developed and deployed.

Comminution is especially challenged in the face of likely future ores. Comminution is the reduction of solid materials from one average particle size to a smaller average particle size, by crushing, grinding, cutting, vibrating, or other processes. Comminution is currently the most energy intensive process used in minerals operations. This will only increase for harder ores, with more disseminated, finer grained, complex mineralogies which will require finer grinding, and thus more energy input, to enable a subsequent separation to occur. High Voltage Pulse (HVP) technology is a selective comminution process designed to decrease the energy required to liberate valuable materials and enable their separation, such that the contained metals can then be extracted.

HVP comminution applies electrical energy (akin to a lightning bolt) directly to ore fragments to achieve selective breakage of particles containing metalliferous mineral grains. In the past 15 years, the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) has conducted extensive research using HVP electrical comminution technology for the mineral industry and have become the leaders in this field. Three major applications for the mining industry have been identified and explored by the research team to date:

• Pre‐weakening – HVP generates cracks/microcracks which pre‐weaken ore particles for improved downstream comminution circuit energy efficiency or higher circuit throughput in a particular comminution design;
• Pre‐concentration – This selectivity allows for early gangue rejection as well as decreasing the economic cut‐off grade, by turning waste into ore;

Enhanced Liberation – HPV results in preferential liberation of minerals resulting in improved recovery in the downstream separation processes. HVP can potentially enable alternative separation technologies, such as coarse particle flotation, to be viable.
Research so far has shown HVP has significant potential to address many current and future mineral processing challenges. Nonetheless, barriers remain to industrial uptake of the HVP technology.  Fundamental knowledge gaps, around ore composition and amenability to HVP, and the optimum means of incorporating this technology and the benefits it provides, into mineral processing circuits exist.
High Voltage Pulse Technology is a potential game-changer in the industry and is therefore a large and exciting research initiative at the JKMRC.  The student intern will work with researchers and undertake various studies and tasks on HVP, including experimental and analysis of results, in order to obtain a better understanding of the responses of ores with different mineralogy to this novel technology.  The intern will gain valuable knowledge about the HVP process as well as learn technical and laboratory skills relevant to the mining industry.

Project: Ore Amenability Assessment 
The JKMRC has conducted extensive research using High Voltage Pulse pre-treatment of mineralised ores for the mining industry.  As previously stated, three major potential applications using this HVP technology have been reported – Pre-weakening, Pre-concentration and Enhanced Liberation. HVP technology therefore has the potential to improve ore processability of different mineralised ore and improve energy consumption, boost processing efficiencies and increase mineral recoveries.  However, more research is required to determine how different ore types behave when treated using HVP.

To date most of the studies has been on sulphide ores but the technology has potential to be used for other commodities i.e. critical minerals, coal, iron, etc.  The objective of this Project is to test the potential of using HVP treatment on a new ore sample and quantify any benefits gained in terms of pre-concentration and pre-weakening. 

The successful applicant will be working with researchers in the HVP group on this project. It is envisaged that the applicant will gain valuable experimental and data analysis skills from the work to be undertaken.  These include:

• Exposure to the mining industry
• Training on a variety of sample preparation equipment and analysis tools
• Experience in developing and executing experimental plans and methodologies
• Exposure to HVP technology and its benefits to the mining industry
• Hands-on experience with the operation of the High Voltage Pulse equipment at the JKMRC
• Investigating the performance of HVP pre-treatment on a particular ore type
• Data collection and analysis skills

At the completion of the project, the successful applicant will be asked to produce a report and/or an oral presentation of their project. They will also have an opportunity to generate publications from their research work.

This project is suitable for 3rd – 4th year students only with a background in mining, minerals processing or chemical engineering.

Dr Christian Antonio and Dr Daniel Lay

Background:
Global demand for minerals and metals, particularly copper and gold, has risen and is forecast to continue rising in the decades to come. Indeed, Batterham (2017) quotes that demand in 2050 will be double that in 2015. The quality of deposits of these materials is decreasing, with them tending to be located at greater depths, be hosted in harder rock matrices, be of lower grade and of a more complex, finer grained and disseminated mineralogy. As such, the costs of processing these deposits, to enable extraction of the valuable metals, have increased and will continue to do so unless novel technologies to reduce costs are developed and deployed.
Comminution is especially challenged in the face of likely future ores. Comminution is the reduction of solid materials from one average particle size to a smaller average particle size, by crushing, grinding, cutting, vibrating, or other processes. Comminution is currently the most energy intensive process used in minerals operations. This will only increase for harder ores, with more disseminated, finer grained, complex mineralogies which will require finer grinding, and thus more energy input, to enable a subsequent separation to occur. High Voltage Pulse (HVP) technology is a selective comminution process designed to decrease the energy required to liberate valuable materials and enable their separation, such that the contained metals can then be extracted.
HVP comminution applies electrical energy directly to ore fragments to achieve selective breakage of particles containing metalliferous mineral grains. In the past 15 years, the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) has conducted extensive research using HVP electrical comminution technology for the mineral industry and have become the leaders in this field. Three major applications for the mining industry have been identified and explored by the research team to date:

• Pre‐weakening – HVP generates cracks/microcracks which pre‐weaken ore particles for improved downstream comminution circuit energy efficiency or higher circuit throughput in a particular comminution design;
• Pre‐concentration – This selectivity allows for early gangue rejection as well as decreasing the economic cut‐off grade, by turning waste into ore;
• Enhanced Liberation – HPV results in preferential liberation of minerals resulting in improved recovery in the downstream separation processes. HVP can potentially enable alternative separation technologies, such as coarse particle flotation, to be viable.

Research to date has shown HVP has significant potential to address many current and future mineral processing challenges. Nonetheless, barriers remain to industrial uptake of the HVP technology.  Fundamental knowledge gaps, around ore composition and amenability to HVP, and the optimum means of incorporating this technology and the benefits it provides, into mineral processing circuits exist.
High Voltage Pulse Technology is a potential game-changer in the industry and is therefore a large and exciting research initiative at the JKMRC.  The student intern will work with researchers and undertake various studies and tasks on HVP, including experimental and analysis of results, in order to obtain a better understanding of the responses of ores with different mineralogy to this novel technology.  The intern will gain valuable knowledge about the HVP process as well as learn technical and laboratory skills relevant to the mining industry.

Project: 
The JKMRC has conducted extensive research using High Voltage Pulse pre-treatment of mineralised ores.  Most of the research done to date has used a commercial HVP unit in batch mode which is slow and time consuming.  The JKMRC has installed a Flexible HVP Testing Facility and has recently designed a novel small-scale continuous HVP system.  The objective of this project is to optimise the new processing unit and to investigate different parameters relevant to its efficient operation with respect to ore-breakage and pre-treatment of ores.  These include:

1. Operating settings – voltage, pulse rate, etc.
2. Electrode configuration
3. Operating mode, etc.

This is an industry focused and sponsored project with potential industrial applications.

The successful applicant will be working with researchers and a PhD Student on this project. It is envisaged that the applicant will gain valuable experimental and data analysis skills from the work to be undertaken.  These include:

• Exposure to the mining industry
• Training on a variety of sample preparation equipment and analysis tools
• Experience in developing and executing experimental plans and methodologies
• Exposure to HVP technology and its benefits to the mining industry
• Hands-on experience with the operation of the novel small-scale continuous HVP unit developed at the JKMRC
• Investigating the performance of HVP pre-treatment on a particular ore type
• Data collection and analysis skills

At the completion of the project, the successful applicant will be asked to produce a report and/or an oral presentation of their project. They will also have an opportunity to generate publications from their research work.

This project is suitable for 3rd – 4th year students only, with a background in mining, minerals processing or chemical engineering.

Dr Christian Antonio

Effect of feed size on Ball mill overloading

6–10 weeks duration, for two students. Hours of engagement must be between 20–36 hours per week with attendance at the Indooroopilly Mine Site required for the experimental work. Results analysis may be able to be performed remotely.

This project is suitable for 3rd – 4th year students, with a background in the sciences.

Conrad Ndimande

10 weeks duration, for 2 students.  Attendance will be required full-time at the Indooroopilly Mine Site.

The research project will support an existing PhD project that is researching how to integrate teeter bed floatation technologies into comminution circuits aiming for early coarse waste rejection. 

Coarse waste rejection is a processing strategy that aims to save grinding energy and increase circuit capacity by separating gangue particles as early as possible in the flowsheet to avoid grinding the entire ore stream to the final required size. Integrating these technologies into comminution circuits poses new technical questions due to its requirement of a coarse, narrowly sized feed distribution. Its performance will also be governed by the degree of liberation of the feed to the flotation device. To optimise the effectiveness of coarse gangue rejection using teeter bed flotation, there is a need to better understand how mineral deportment and liberation are affected by comminution processes. 

This project will try to decouple the effects of breakage within a breakage device to be able to measure how liberation classes respond to a single primary breakage event.

This project is suitable for students who would like to learn basic mineral processing skills and theories.

Self-motivation and willingness to learn new skills are essential.

Professor Mohsen Yahyaei

Second supervisor: PhD Candidate Hayla Miceli

This project is suitable for students with a background in chemical or metallurgical engineering, 3rd or 4th year undergraduate studnets or master course students. UQ enrolled students only.

Dr Xiaodong Ma and Dr Helen Tang

10 weeks duration.  Attendance will be required on-site at the Indooroopilly Mine Site.

This project involves work with hyperspectral and geotechnical data from coal mines in Bowen Basin. 

The student will be working on representative data to integrate mineralogical/textural/structural information from the hyperspectral data with the geotechnical data.

The objective of this project is to process data from a breakage device (Short Impact Load Cell) to extract geotechnical properties as well as data already collected from hyperspectral technologies at various resolution.

The student should be able to code and run hierarchical clustering analysis in Python. Potentially the results of hierarchical clustering will be presented as a dendrogram.

The applicant will benefit from this project by being exposed to high-quality applied research in the mining context. He/she will work on hyperspectral and geotechnical data analysis. 

The successful applicant will gain skills in data analysis and reporting.  At conclusion of the project the applicant will be expected to present the learnings providing an oral presentation.

This project can be the start of a larger research project, such as Honours or PhD. 

The project is well suited to 3rd or 4th year Engineering students – ideally Mechatronics - wishing to obtain experience in Research and Development practices for mining industry.

Self-motivation and willingness to learn new skills are essential.

Dr Karina Barbosa and Katerina Savinova.

10 weeks duration.  Attendance will be required on-site at the Indooroopilly Mine Site.

The Julius Kruttschnitt Minerals Research Centre (JKMRC) is renowned for the development of novel rock breakage and characterisation devices for mining. 

A research lab scale device used for particle breakage under impact is the SILC (Short Impact Load Cell). A new version of this device is set up to break smaller particles (2 mm to 600 micron) and it will require some level of automation and data processing. The objective of this project is to improve the SILC test to be fast and reliable for such small particles. The usage of laser points, hand microscope camera, and ultra-high-speed camera will be considered.

The shape and height of the particles needs to be measured and prepared for experimentation, as well as a proper execution of the experiments and the analysis of the results.

The successful applicant will receive training in the safe use of the breakage devices to conduct experimental investigations, as well as gain skills in accurate data collection, analysis and reporting, so the device and data processing can be automated. 

At conclusion of the project the applicant will be expected to provide an oral presentation on the modifications and learnings. 

The project is well suited to 3rd or 4th year Engineering students – ideally Mechatronics - wishing to obtain experience in Research and Development practices for mining industry.

Self-motivation and willingness to learn new skills are essential.

Dr Karina Barbosa.

10 weeks duration, 36 hours per week.  Attendance will be required on-site at the Indooroopilly Mine Site.

JKSimFloat is a computer program for simulating mining flotation concentrator flowsheets used for flotation design and optimisation studies.  There are new emerging flotation models that need to be incorporated into the software. 

This project would involve creating for one or more models: 

• GUI interface design in keeping with other models associated with the software.  The design would be outlined in documentation and then supplied to the software engineer familiar with the JKSimFloat system, for implementation, 
• C++ programming of the model calculations
• Testing of the model calculations
• Compilation of the Help documentation

One or more of the new models will be implemented in JKSimFloat extending the capability of the system.

The applicant would gain experience with flotation circuit related modelling and get an appreciation for the steps involved in translating models into user-friendly code and producing associated documentation.

Applicants would be expected to produce an oral presentation at the end of their project outlining the work performed and the learnings from the project.

This project is open to applications from students with a background in mineral processing, chemical engineering or computer science.  Students in their 3rd or 4th year of study are preferred.

Some programming experience would be beneficial but extensive experience is not required as the programming to be performed in the project is relatively basic in nature.
 

Associate Professor Kym Runge

The effect of pyrite elemental composition and textures on electrochemical properties and flotation behaviour have been extensively studied as individual factors in single mineral studies. However, little information exists on their combined influence, interdependences, or the effect of a texture prevalence within an ore on flotation. Pyrite textures are often identified; however, their abundance is rarely quantified, particularly for complex mineralogical systems. 

The research project will focus on investigating the relation between pyrite textures and their prevalence, mineralogical associations, elemental composition, and electrochemical properties on flotation performance of ore samples from Mount Isa. The project scope includes proposing a methodology for identification and quantification of pyrite textures using image recognition analysis. 

This is an experimental project with careful data analysis/ image analysis and interpretation.

The applicants will develop a range of skills in conducting experiments, the experimental method, and data analysis. Specifically, they will gain skills in flotation (including crushing, grinding, classification-sizing), having an opportunity to work in image processing, and data analysis.
Any programming language, preferentially Matlab or Python, is desirable for image processing.

At the completion of the project, the successful applicant will be asked to produce a report and/or an oral presentation of their project.

Associate Professor Liza Forbes and Dr Unzile Yenial Arslan.

10 weeks duration.  Attendance will be required full-time at the Indooroopilly Mine Site.

The research project is focused on reviewing the existing standards and frameworks for risk assessment of Autonomous systems and technologies for mining operations, understanding the gaps in existing frameworks and highlighting the needs. The work includes interviewing relevant people from mining companies and domain experts to gather evidence for the gaps.

The applicant will develop knowledge of risk assessment standards and frameworks for autonomous systems and technologies in this project. This project will provide an opportunity to establish a network with industry experts and gain insight into the industry’s emerging challenges. This will be an excellent experience for the applicant to navigate their career.

The successful applicant will receive supervision from studying and understanding risk assessment frameworks and standards.  The applicant will also will have the opportunity to engage with experts at the other centres of the Sustainable Minerals Institute, particularly the Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre (MISHC), and industry experts to gain their insight and understand the challenges associated with existing risk assessment frameworks for autonomous systems and technologies in the mining industry.

The project will deliver a technical review of existing frameworks and standards for risk assessment of autonomous systems and technologies, including industry experts’ views on the gaps and challenges.

If successful, the outcome of this project could form the central part of a journal article and a conference presentation. 

This project is suitable for applicants who are comfortable with learning new topics and with search in databases. Experience with conducting interviews and good technical writing skills are valuable.

Previous experience with desktop studies is desirable.

Professor Mohsen Yahyaei (JKMRC)
Dr Benjamin Seligmann (MISHC)
Adjunct Professor Mathew Hancock (MISHC)

10 weeks duration, 36 hours per week.  Attendance will be required full-time at the Indooroopilly Mine Site.

Comminution, or rock breakage, is a highly energy intensive process in the mining industry. There is potential for energy savings and to improve the process efficiency, but no standard baseline is available to benchmark on-site comminution equipment. The issue lies in the unavailability of a suitable lab-scale method to determine the practical minimum energy requirements for the breakage of rocks coming from different domains of a mine. Various techniques have been developed over the last few decades, but they are limited in numerous ways:

• inaccurate application and measurement of low energy impact
• insufficient generation of fines (sub 100 µm) for use in calculating the size specific energy
• inability to apply appropriate energies to small particles (below 5 mm)
• unable to achieve the ideal of primary fracture only

A novel ore characterisation method is being developed at the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) to overcome the shortcomings of conventional rock breakage tests and to benchmark on-site comminution equipment.

The successful applicant will gain an understanding of various ore characterisation methods and receive hands-on experience in lab mineral processing with sample preparation, crushing and grinding and material sizing.

This project provides an opportunity to work on the latest developments in the ore characterisation space.

The applicant will be required to deliver an oral presentation on data collection and analysis.

This project is suitable for students who have a background in Chemical engineering, Metallurgical engineering, Physics, and Mechanical.

Self-motivation and willingness to learn new skills are essential.

Professor Mohsen Yahyaei

Second supervisor: PhD Candidate Shujaat Ali

10 weeks duration, for two students. Attendance at the Indooroopilly Mine Site is required.

This project is suitable for any student willing to gain experience in mineral classification.

Dr Vladimir Jokovic
PhD Candidate Mussa Lisso

10 weeks duration, between 30-36 hours per week. Attendance will be required at the Indooroopilly Mine Site, and remote work as agreed.

The student will be exposed to a multi-disciplinary team working on emissions reduction methods. They will gain an understanding of the mining value chain, model development using system dynamics, sensitivity analyses, and model validation methods.

The applicant will be required to deliver an oral presentation and final report.

This project is suitable for students who have a background in Mathematics, Physics or Engineering. Strong mathematical skills are essential. Python programming experience may prove valuable, as is self-motivation and a willingness to learn new skills.

Dr Gordon Forbes

10 weeks duration.  Attendance will be required full-time at the Indooroopilly Mine Site.

This project is suited to any Engineering students wishing to obtain experience in Research and Development practices for mining industry.

Self-motivation, pro-active and willingness to learn new skills are essential.

Dr Vladimir Jokovic

10 weeks duration, between 30–36 hours per week.

COVID-19 considerations: This project can be completed remotely. Presence on site at the Sustainable Minerals Institute (either St Lucia or Indooroopilly Mine Site) is encouraged, however other plans can be made via negotiation with the supervisory team.

A new framework – the Linear-Landscape-Layered modelling (LLLM) framework – has been developed. This research will test the framework’s efficacy by applying data from a case study – the destruction of Juukan Gorge, Western Australia (WA). 

You will be trained in the use of this new framework to be able to complete the research. 

The key focus for the project will be to analyse how a business and/or government made a decision about the whether or how they progress with a new project. In particular, the goal of the project is to explore whether the new framework (mentioned above) can help generate new insights about how to better manage future projects similar to the one analysed in the case study.

The activities of this project include:
1 . Selecting a defined set of sources that describe what happened in the case study scenario (e.g.  official reports, journal articles, relevant media articles and testimonials from local communities). 
2. Populating the framework with data about what events occurred over the case study timeline. 
3. Using the framework’s formal structure to explore what other events or activities could have been relevant for understanding the case study scenario, that may not have been identified by previous analyses. 
4. From the results of step 3, generate a set of questions that could be asked of the situation to understand it more deeply. Compare this list with recommendations from previous analyses and discuss the similarities and differences.

CASE STUDY DESCRIPTION: JUUKAN GORGE

In 2020, the mining company Rio Tinto legally detonated an area of Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara of Western Australia to expand its iron ore mine. This act damaged two ancient and sacred rock shelters which hold significant cultural heritage value to the Traditional Owners, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (Binigura) people, and to Australia. 

Following the incident, Rio Tinto said:

“In allowing the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters to occur, we fell far short of our values as a company and breached the trust placed in us by the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we operate. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that the destruction of a site of such exceptional cultural significance never happens again, to earn back the trust that has been lost, and to re-establish our leadership in communities and social performance” (RioTinto 2022)
 

The student can expect to learn about:

• Collecting diverse data from a variety of sources about the Juukan Gorge scenario.
• The details of the new framework, and how to integrate and fit data into it to make inferences.
• Generate a list of key questions to deeply understand Juukan Gorge, to help in the nation-wide efforts to engage more effectively with similar situations in the future.
• Delivering a short assessment report reflecting on the efficacy of the modelling framework in analysing the Juukan Gorge scenario.

This project would be suited to 3rd or 4th year students, however an excellent 2nd year will be considered.

The student can be from any of the following disciplines (non-exhaustive):

• Social Science and related fields
• Business Management / Organisational dynamics and related fields
• Project Management
• Economics
• Engineering – e.g. mining, chemical
• Science – especially mathematics or physics
• Environmental Science

Other disciplines will be considered.

10 weeks duration, between 30-36 hours per week.

COVID-19 considerations: This project can be completed remotely. Presence on site at the Sustainable Minerals Institute (either St Lucia or Indooroopilly Mine Site) is encouraged, however other plans can be made via negotiation with the supervisory team.

Mine closure and rehabilitation is a complex process. There are many technical, environmental, social and economic considerations that must be made and managed together in order to successfully rehabilitate the mine site.

Being a multi-faceted problem, this means that rehabilitation has many different but interconnected risks - i.e. the uncertainties associated with the process of rehabilitation which can threaten its success. Exploring the depth to which these diverse risks are causally interconnected is an open area of research, but critically imortant for the environment and society in the vicinity of a closed mine to thrive.

Ranger is a uranium mine in the Northern Territory that is a few years away from the end of its mine-life. there is ongoing collaboration between the Supervising Scientist of the Northern Territory (NT government department) in conjunction with the Sustainable Minerals Institute at UQ to help support and enable the rehabilitation journey for Ranger post-closure. Previous work performed to undertand the risks to rehabilitation for Ranger has been two-fold:

1. The development of a Bayesian Network-based model of the rehabilitation outcomes across a diverse set of possible environmental conditions. This was done by the Supervising Scientist of NT aid post-closure decision making in terms of knowing what risks contribute to successful rehabilitation, and what risks undermine this.
2. Ongoing research into a framework for ecosystem trajectory model development, tailored to Ranger. Ecosystem trajectory models describe the states an ecosystem traverses on its journey from immediately after the mine is closed to the final rehabilitated state. These models help in the identification of risks to rehabilitation success across time, highlighting when these risks drive the state of the ecosystem away from the desired path.

This project explores enhancements that could be gained in mine rehabilitation risk management by combining both of the above modelling approaches, Bayesian Networks (BNs) and ecosystem trajectory models (ETM), together by means of a third kind of causal model: Causal Network Topology Analysis (CaNeTA). CaNeTA is a very flexible approach that can be used to convert data about risk events from a wide variety of sources, and embed causally connected risk events in space-time.

All of these types are useful models in their own domain, and are (can be) all used to study a closure process. The hypothesis is that being able to switch between or use each of these models in an integrated way for a specific closure scenario will help improve the overall certainty in the actions to take to drive the ecosystem to where you want it to be, compared to only using them separately. This is because it is thought that combining all three approaches would yield a method that helps identify:

• what the risks are, their causes and consequences
• when the risks impact on the ecosystem trajectory across time, and;
• where interventions could optimally be made to ensure rehabilitation success.

The key activities of this project will be:

1. Literature review: understand how the BN, ETM and CaNeTA methods operate; understand the key steps in mine site rehabilitation.
2. Develop a method of switching between BN models, ETMs and CaNeTA models of mine rehabilitation risks.
3. Apply the approach developed in step 2 to compare effectiveness of risk management decision making with the models combined and separately in a case study related to the closure of Ranger.

The student will gain skills in:

• Understanding the process of mine site rehabilitation.
• Developing and using Bayesian Networks, Ecosystem Trajectory Models and Causal Networks. These represent three different but complementary modelling approaches that can be applied in many settings outside of the mine closure scenarios.
• Performing and evaluating risk management decision making.
• The outputs of this project will be collated into a final report, which could be further converted into a journal or conference paper, depending on the final quality and quantity of work delivered.
• Throughout the project, the student will be asked to present their interim findings in both informal and formal settings, for developing presentation skills.

This project would be suited to 3^rd or 4^th year students, however an excellent 2nd year will be considered.

The student can be from any of the following disciplines (non-exhaustive):

• Engineering
• Environmental Science (or equivalent)
• Science
• Mathematics

Students from any degree are welcome to apply, but they are required to be comfortable with the following content in the project:

• Probability theory, graph theory, state space representations and ecosystem models
• Mine site rehabilitation processes
• Risk management processes
• Learning how to use previously unfamiliar (but simple) software to perform the required analyses.

IMPORTANT:  You do NOT have to know the above content to be considered. We will teach you what you need to know, but we are looking for someone willing to learn.

Dr Ben Seligmann (Sustainable Minerals Institute)

Co-supervision will be delivered by Professor Peter Erskine (Sustainable Minerals Institute), in association with Katherine Harries (PhD student, Sustainable Minerals Institute)