Dr João Felipe Costa

Dr João Felipe Costa is a Professor at the Mining Engineer Department at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where he joined in 1986. Before joining the University, he served as a Mining Engineer at a major coal operation in south Brazil for seven years. During this time, he was involved in mining unit operations optimisation involving computer applications in the early 80s. He received a BSc and MSc in mining engineering from the same University he serves today in 1983 and 1992. He was also awarded a PhD in Geostatistics from the University of Queensland in 1997.

As a mining engineering professor, he taught subjects on open-cast mining, mineral exploration, and ore deposits evaluation. Presently, his duties are focused on research and teaching geostatistics for undergraduate and graduate courses. Dr João Felipe has advised more than 110 theses and dissertations and has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers in journals and conference proceedings. On various occasions, he received a distinguished professor award from the mining engineering graduates from the Federal University in the last 20 years. He was also the head of the mining engineering department on two occasions in the last decade. Professor João Felipe is a member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, AusIMM; the International Association for Mathematical Geology, IAMG; the Society of Mining Engineers – SME, USA; the Society of Mining Engineers – Brazil; and the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy – SAIMM.

He has coordinated the mineral exploration and mine planning research lab at his University for the last 35 years and has been involved with APCOM since 1996, when he published his first paper in the conference proceedings. Since then, João Felipe has participated in APCOM meetings, regularly published papers, and served on the technical committee. João Felipe Costa is the recipient of the 2014 John Cedric Griffiths Teaching Award. He was the chairman of the 2013 APCOM in Brazil and co-editor of the previous conference proceedings.