Peter Chapman is a Principal Tailings Engineer based in WSP Golder’s Perth office. He has been with WSP Golder for more than 18 years and is the Mine Waste Group Leader for Australia. He holds Engineer of Record and ITRB roles for major clients across Australia and has a strong focus on risk management processes.

Dr Rens Verburg is a Principal Geochemist with Golder, now a member of WSP, and has over 30 years of experience in evaluation of mining geochemical issues. Rens has been involved in numerous geochemical studies at mining operations across the globe. He was the Project Director and part author of the Global Acid Rock Drainage (GARD) Guide on behalf of the International Network for Acid Prevention, a mining industry consortium. The GARD Guide is the leading, world-wide on-line reference for prevention and mitigation of acid rock drainage and identifies best practice in the field of mine waste management.

David joined The University of Queensland in 2001 as Director of the newly established Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (CSRM), one of six organisational units comprising the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI). Under David’s leadership, CSRM became a leading global centre for applied research and professional education relating to social performance management in the mining and minerals sector.

In 2012 David moved into a Deputy Director role in the SMI, with responsibility for driving cross-disciplinary research initiatives to address the technical, environmental and social dimensions of mining and sustainability. He retired from the University in July 2016 but continues to be active as a researcher and consultant.

For the first half of 2017 he was based in Lima, Peru, where he worked with the Universidad del Pacifico to build a research capability in mining and sustainability. In 2019 he led the development of a new mining engineering curriculum for the Western Australia School of Mines (Curtin University).

In 2020 he was engaged by the Global Tailings Review to edit a compendium of research papers and commentaries to accompany the release of the Global Tailings Standard. David is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford University.

Deanna is Professor and Director of the Centre for Social Responsibility (CSRM), part of the Sustainable Minerals Institute, at UQ. With a background in business, development studies and social science, Deanna has worked in mining for 20 years. She spent her first 10 years with BHP – in site-based roles, and later in corporate headquarters. She then moved into the university sector. Deanna now leads a group of 25 researchers working in Australia and internationally. The social performance aspects of tailings facility management is one topic, amongst many others, that the Centre works on.

Laurie Reemeyer has a Bachelor of Engineering (Minerals Process) from University of Queensland and an MBA from UC Berkeley and has over 25 years experience in base metals processing. He started his career at Mount Isa Mines and later was Metallurgy Manager at Zinifex Century Mine, where he had oversight of the tailings storage facility.

As Principal Development Advisor at Zinifex, he was responsible for process and environmental due diligence on potential base metals acquisitions globally. After completing his MBA, he spent several years at Amec Foster Wheeler in study management, process engineering and sustainability roles, before forming Resourceful Paths, a Vancouver based consultancy focused on sustainability in mining and metals. He recently provided technical support to Sedgman and New Century Resources for the reprocessing of historical tailings.