Members

Prof Francois Malan (Pr.Eng, MSAIMM, MSANIRE) was a Chamber of Mines bursar and he joined the CSIR in 1993 when the Chamber of Mines Research Organisation (COMRO) became the CSIR Division of Mining Technology. Through various promotions, he became the Programme Manager of the Rock Engineering Division in 2001. He completed his PhD (Mining) at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1998 and was awarded the prestigious ISRM ROCHA medal for this work. He has held various positions in the mining industry and this includes consultancy work at Groundwork Consultancy. He was also the Senior Consultant Rock Engineering for Sibanye Gold for the period from 2011 to 2017. His areas of expertise includes numerical modelling, pillar behaviour, geomechanical instrumentation and layout design His present research interests are inelastic numerical modelling of tabular excavations and the effect of mining rate on these excavations. He is also a researcher in the Harmony Gold Chair in numerical modelling and rock engineering in the Mining Engineering Department of the University of Pretoria.

Email: [email protected]

Jónatan Jacobs is the Project Manager of the Mining Resilience Research Centre at the University of Pretoria. In this role, he is responsible for writing up tender proposals for contract research projects, sourcing and assigning the appropriate skills and expertise for the various requirements of each project, handling UP intra-network coordination of projects between multiple disciplines and departments, and other general project management duties. Jónatan has focussed his post-graduate research on topics such as new and emerging technologies, innovation in mining, investigating potential applications for non-mining technologies in the mining environment, and Technology Intelligence. The latter forms a prominent part of his PhD (Engineering) research, having completed his M.Eng (Mining) degree with honours in 2016. Jónatan is also an active participant in the research and development projects under the South African Mining Extraction Research, Development and Innovation Strategy.

Email: [email protected] 

Johann Uys holds a professional registration with the HPCSA in the category Psychology. He specialises in Leadership and has been consulting in strategy, large scale change, organisational development and commercial fields in many sectors of the economy. Project involvement ranges from government, mining and minerals, power generation, tourism and leisure, the motor vehicle industry, financial institutions and retail banking, retail sales, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, media and advertising as well as ITC. As an international consultant he has done extensive work in similar fields in Africa, Europe and South America.
Johann’s main focus over the last decade has been the mining and primary industries and specifically sustainability from organisational strategy and structuring perspective as well as leadership. He is none of the founder e of Leadership 2013 at the Chamber of Mines of South Africa. He joined the Dept of Mining Engineering in 2016 and is responsible for Mining Engineering Leadership Academy . Johann also fulfils the Human Factor function research in the MRRC and he represents the MRRC on the SAMERDI research initiatives with regard to Human Factors in mechanisation and modernisation of the Mining Industry.