Dr. G. Ward Wilson is a Professor of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering at the University of Alberta and the NSERC/COSIA Industrial Research Chair (IRC) in Oil Sands Tailings Geotechnique. He brings over 35 years of industrial experience to his practice in advanced mine waste management and unsaturated soil mechanics. He has served as a specialist advisor to several large international mining projects, such as the well-known Acid Rock Drainage Risk Review completed by Rio Tinto, and was a member of the Expert Panel tasked with the assessment of the technical causes of the rupture of Dam I in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil. He served as the lead author responsible for the chapter on Prevention and Mitigation in the Global Acid Rock Drainage Guide prepared for the International Network for Acid Prevention and contributed two chapters to the Guidelines for Mine Waste Dump and Stockpile Design (CSIRO Publishing). 

Dr. Nicholas Beier is an Associate Professor of Geoenvironmental Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta. His research interests include freeze-thaw dynamics of mining wastes, frozen ground engineering, waste management in cold regions, modeling and characterizing the engineering behavior of oil sand tailings, tailings dewatering technology development and simulation modeling for evaluation of mine waste management technologies. He also conducts research into the long-term management and closure of mine waste structures. He is the Principal Investigator of the Oil Sands Tailings Research Facility and a Theme Leader in Phase II of the NSERC/COSIA Industrial Research Chair in Oil Sands Tailings Geotechnique.

Scott Martens is the Director, Tailings Engineering at Teck Resources, providing corporate oversight of tailings engineering at Teck’s operating mines, development projects and legacy facilities across North and South America. Scott has 28 years of geotechnical engineering experience, with 15 years in consulting and 13 in geotechnical mining operations. His focus has been on the design, construction and safety assessments of tailings, hydroelectric and irrigation dams. Prior to joining Teck, Scott worked extensively in the Alberta oil sands, leading an engineering group with multiple teams responsible for the design and construction of mine tailings facilities, mine waste dumps, pit slopes, geology, and hydrogeology at the Albian Sands operations.

Scott has a Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree from the University of British Columbia and a Master’s degree in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Alberta. Scott is an Adjunct Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Alberta, a member of the independent review board for the tailings facilities at a gold mine in Finland, and is the Chair of the Mining Dams Committee for the Canadian Dam Association.

Dr. Morgenstern is an international authority on geotechnical engineering relating to slope stability and dam design, a pioneer of permafrost and cold regions engineering research and a highly sought-after consultant. He has made major contributions in research and engineering practice to many areas of the geotechnical discipline, including the development of the Morgenstern-Price method for stability analysis, the analysis of rate effects in earth materials, earth and rockfill dam engineering, tailings engineering, static liquefaction phenomena, and the rapidly developing field of risk analysis applied to engineering works. As an educator, researcher and practitioner, the international scope of his experience spans over 30 countries on six continents. Throughout his career as an educator, he has trained a significant pool of highly qualified personnel and continues to actively contribute to the University of Alberta; many of his students have become renowned practitioners and international experts in the geotechnical engineering discipline. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Toronto, Queen’s University and the University of Alberta. In addition, he is an Honorary Professor at Zhejiang University, PRC.

Dr. Peter Robertson has more than 40 years of experience as an educator, researcher, consultant and practitioner specializing in the areas of in-situ testing and site investigation, earthquake design of geotechnical structures, and soil liquefaction. He is the co-author of the primary reference book on Cone Penetration Testing (CPT). Peter has also assisted in the development of several inexpensive CPT-based interpretation software programs and has presented a series of free webinars in an effort to enhance education and practice. Peter was the Chair of the Expert Panel to investigate the failure of the Feijao Tailing dam failure in Brazil in 2019. Peter continues to provide private consulting to a wide range of clients and currently resides in southern California. He is a Technical Advisor for Gregg Drilling LLC and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta.

Angela Küpper, Ph.D., P.Eng., FEIC, has more than forty years of experience in the design, construction, rehabilitation and independent reviews of earthfill dams, including tailings dams and water retention dams for power generation and water supply. She has worked in Canada, USA, Brazil, Colombia, Congo, Chile, Suriname, Madagascar and Mongolia. Angela’s doctoral work in the late 1980s was on the topic of design and construction of tailings dams. Since then, she has been responsible for numerous dam and waste dump projects as a designer, engineer-of-record, expert consultant and independent reviewer. In the mining industry her experience includes gold, copper, magnetite, bauxite, nickel, mixed metals, iron, coal, and oil sands. These projects have involved the whole range from site selection, site investigation, laboratory testing, numerical modelling, liquefaction evaluation, to construction supervision, instrumentation and risk assessments.

Over the last 20 years, Angela has been retained as an independent reviewer for large water retention dams and tailings facilities, and she serves on independent review boards for some of the largest global mining companies. She has contributed over the years to the development of several industry guidelines; more recently she was a member of the Expert Panel that authored the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM). She was inducted in 2021 as Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada Fellow for “exceptional contributions to engineering in Canada”. Angela was selected as the 2011 Distinguished Lecturer of the ASCE/University of California, Berkeley where she spoke on the design and performance of earth fill dams and the 2019 Distinguished Lecturer of the University of British Columbia, Geological Engineering, where she spoke on risk management of tailings facilities.

Gord McKenna is a geotechnical engineer and geologist who builds mining landforms. He brings 36 years experience in mine operations and international consulting for metal, oil sands, coal, potash, and diamond mines. McKenna Geotechnical provides independent geotechnical review, design, and advice to mines, regulators, and communities. Gord sits on a dozen geotechnical review boards, and chairs the Landform Design Institute.  

Gord is a builder. He and his teams have designed and built 26 reclaimed watersheds that cover 54 square kilometers and host 38 wetlands and 120 kilometers of streams. He has co-authored 110 technical papers and book chapters and led 40 landform design courses. Gord’s specialties include mining geotechnique, tailings dams, soft tailings capping, and landform design. He has a BASc in Geological Engineering from the University of British Columbia and a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Alberta.

Dirk Van Zyl is Professor Emeritus at the Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. Dirk has more than 45 years of experience in research, teaching and consulting in tailings and mine waste rock disposal and heap leach design. Dirk received a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering in 1972 and a B.Sc. (Honors) in Civil Engineering in 1974, both from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He also received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Geotechnical Engineering from Purdue University in 1976 and 1979, respectively. In 1998 he completed an Executive MBA at the University of Colorado. He is a registered professional engineer in California.

Dirk has consulted internationally on many mining projects with respect to tailings, heap leach and mine rock management. These projects covered the whole mining life cycle, from exploration to closure and post-closure, in a large range of climatic and geographic environments. Most recently his consulting relates to Tailings Review Boards and Panels in Canada, USA and Internationally. 

Dr. Louis Katele Kabwe is a PhD graduate from the Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering of the University of British Columbia. He is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Alberta, the Director of the Unsaturated Soil Mechanics Lab, and Manager of the Oil Sands Tailings Research Facility (OSTRF). Dr. Kabwe has 10 years of experience in mine waste rock piles and has been involved in oil sands tailings research for more than 12 years. His work focuses on the development of laboratory experiments, research methods for the evaluation of the consolidation behavior of oil sands tailings, the influence of freeze/thaw on the consolidation properties, the drying processes of tailings and the evaluation of the performance of tailings dewatering methods.

Professor David Williams has over 40 years of teaching, research and consulting experience. He directs the Geotechnical Engineering Centre at UQ and manages the industry-sponsored Large Open Pit Project. He is internationally recognized for his expertise and experience in mine waste management and mine closure, particularly the design, construction, operation, closure and rehabilitation of tailings dams and waste rock dumps, including the design of covers.

David authored in 2009 and 2016 the Tailings Management Handbook, as part of the Commonwealth Leading Practice Sustainable Development Program for the Mining Industry. He is on the Working Party for the Australian National Committee for Large Dams Guidelines on Tailings Dams – Planning, Design, Construction, Operation and Closure, published in 2012, with an Addendum in 2019 and a review currently underway. David was on the Expert Panel that investigated the technical causes of the Brumadinho tailings dam failure in 2019 and chairs a number of tailings ITRBs internationally. David initiated in 2020 and delivers the highly successful AusIMM Professional Certificate in Tailings Management.

Joe Quinn joined KCB's Calgary office in 2009, where he led an advanced geotechnics and numerical modelling team. He became an Associate in 2013, and Principal in 2020. In 2018, he moved from Calgary to open the York office and expand the company’s European presence.

Joe has worked on mining projects in Europe, Africa, South America, Canada, Australasia, and Asia. His expertise has made him a sought-after tailings dam designer and reviewer on large mining projects, and a trusted advisor to investigation panels related to recent tailings dam failures.