Board of Directors

The Mining3 Board of Directors sets overall policy, determines the strategic direction and oversees technology transfer and commercialisation activities through quarterly meetings. In consultation with the Research Committee, the Board directs the research focus of Mining3.

 

Leeanne Bond

Non-Executive Director/Chair

Leeanne Bond has over 35 years corporate experience including 18 years as a professional company director and board member

Skills and experience

Leeanne is a prominent engineering leader, advocating for innovation and entrepreneurship, improved project governance, gender equity and workplace diversity and inclusion. Leeanne was a founding executive of WorleyParsons’ business in Queensland, NT and PNG.

Leeanne is currently an independent non-executive director of Aurecon Limited, ASX listed Synertec Corporation Limited (SOP) and is a non-executive director of  Australian government’s Snowy Hydro Limited.Leeanne  retired from the board of The University of Queensland’s JKTech Pty Ltd in 2020 to take up the role as chair of Mining3. She is a director of her own consultancy, Breakthrough Energy Pty Ltd.

She has previously served on the boards of public, private and government entities in engineering, innovation, energy, water and resources and recently retired from the board of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation after a 5 year term. Leeanne served as the first female President of Engineers Australia in Queensland in 2002 and is a past Deputy Chair of the Board of Professional Engineers. She was named Australian Professional Engineer of the Year in 2007 by Engineers Australia and has served on the national board of Engineers Australia. Leeanne was awarded a UQ Vice Chancellors Alumni Excellence Award in October 2022.

Qualifications 

Leeanne has a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering and an MBA from The University of Queensland. Leeanne is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a member of Chief Executive Women. She is a Chartered Professional Engineer, an Honorary Fellow of Engineers Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.

Jack Barnes

Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer

Jack Barnes has over 25 years of corporate experience including 10 years in executive leadership roles.

Skills and experience

Jack brings more than 25 years of experience spanning operational, strategic, commercial, and corporate roles in oil and gas.

A tenacious, global Commercial and Strategy Director with expertise in asset management, joint-venture governance, post-merger integration and business transformation in the energy sector. Has held P&L responsibility and led major capital and commercial business opportunities.

He joins Mining3 from Shell, where his most recent role was leading cost efficiency across Shell’s global businesses through the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Prior to this, he served on the Shell Australia Leadership Team in several roles including as leader of the post-merger integration of BG-Group in Australia and as VP for the Arrow Joint Venture in Queensland. His career has taken him around the world, and he has spent most of it living and working overseas.

Qualifications 

Jack has a First-Class Honours degree in Electrical Engineering from Sydney University and a PhD in Engineering from Cambridge University. Before his oil and gas career, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge University. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining in the UK.

 

LinkedIn profile:

Jack Barnes

Tony Sprague

Non-Executive Director/Chair Audit & Risk Committee

Skills and experience

Tony brings a wide variety of experience in surface and underground mining projects gained in both Australian and international mining operations.

He currently leads a team of internal experts, consultants and contractors in a number of mining transformation projects across Newcrest’s global operations. These projects are focused on the use of new technology and innovative thinking to achieve step-change improvements in safety, costs and productivity.

Qualifications

B.Eng (Geological Engineering) – RMIT University
B. App Sci (Applied Geology) – RMIT University
M. AusIMM

Jayde Webb

Non-Executive Director

Skills and experience

Jayde Webb is a mining engineer with over 20 years of global experience in the mining sector. Jayde has held a variety of senior technical, operations and management roles with both contractor and owner mining companies.

She currently leads the mining technology development function at South32, focused on identifying opportunities for innovation in mining extraction and application of novel technologies to improve safety, productivity and company returns. Prior to this Jayde managed global contracts and tendering processes for a privately owned international contracting company.

Jayde has held underground manager roles in Australia and alternate roles in Tanzania. Jayde has gained extensive technical experience across a variety of ore bodies, mining methods and operating structures.

Qualifications

WASM – Western Australian School of Mines

Bachelor of Engineering (Mining Engineering) with Honours

First Class Mine Managers Certificate of Competency, Underground Shift Supervisors Certificate of Competency and have been a member of the AUSIMM for 25 years.

LinkedIn profile:

Jayde Webb 

Schagen Diederik (Dirk) Van Soelen

Non-Executive Director

Skills and experience

Dirk van Soelen is the Vice President of Global Initiating Systems at Incitec Pivot Limited (IPL), the parent company of Dyno Nobel – a global leader in commercial explosives and blast design.

Dirk holds an Electric & Electronic Engineering degree and an MBA, and has been working in the mining and explosives industry for 20 years.  His experience includes executive, senior technical, compliance and operations leadership roles, such as the Executive of Technology and Compliance for AEL Mining Services and Chief Operating Officer for DetNet South Africa. Dirk also served as a director on the board of DetNet, a world leader in the development of electronic initiation systems.

Specialising in leading and managing change in technical innovation, Dirk is currently responsible for setting the Initiating Systems global growth and technology strategy and new product introduction for Dyno Nobel.  Dirk is also responsible for the mining application technology strategy and related products and value offerings.

New technology development continues to change the way Dyno Nobel is delivering practical innovation on the ground to exceed customers’ expectations and improve the safety and efficiency of our industry.

Qualifications

 

Rudie Boshoff

Non-Executive Director/Chair People & Culture

Throughout his 25 years in the mining industry, Rudie has lived and worked in the United States, South Africa and Australia.

Skills and experience

Rudie Boshoff is a Business Development Executive with a background in engineering whose work has demonstrated success with global teams to develop and implement mining technology and services. Over the last 25 years in mining Rudie has exhibited skill at developing operational productivity enhancements, global performance improvement strategies, and synergistic team-building initiatives to meet and exceed mining customer goals.

Some of these highlights can be seen in the startup of a transformational business unit for the Mechanical Rock cutting system in Komatsu. Another is setting up and IOT business unit by successfully introducing Remote Health Monitoring (RHM) and Prognostic capability for underground mining products/systems. In both these examples, this was done through utilizing a broad scope of industry knowledge and dynamic business acumen toward directing forward-thinking development and implementation of technology and service strategies to profitably grow the business unit, including setting up and assisting regions in executing core partnering for performance with targeted customers.

 

The wide mining industry and equipment manufacturing has positioned Rudie well to contribute to Mining3 by being an alternate board member representation as well as chairing the People and Culture committee.

Qualifications 

Pretoria University, BSc Electrical Engineering, 1995

 

LinkedIn profile:

Rudie Boshoff

Prof Michael Bruenig

Non-Executive Director/Chair Research & Innovation Committee

Skills and experience

Michael has experience in R&D in academia, industry, and government agencies and has worked in high tech areas in Europe, the USA, and Australia. He obtained his PhD from RWTH Aachen University in Germany where he worked for the first five years of his career.

Prior to his engagement with UQ, Michael worked with CSIRO where he led the initiative to establish a National Research Flagship on Digital Productivity. As a member of CSIRO’s Executive Management Council, Michael most recently guided this $90M per annum business unit through a merger process with National ICT Australia to form Data61, a new entity with a focus on data innovation in Australia.

Michael was also the Executive Manager of CSIRO’s Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies, a large engineering research site in Brisbane. He hosted R&D centres from industry and government agencies before coming to Australia in 2007. Professor Brünig was with the Robert Bosch Corporation R&D in Silicon Valley, California.

Qualifications

MSc and PhD – RWTH Aachen University in Germany

LinkedIn Profile

Michael Brünig

Brett Triffett

Non-Executive Director

Skills and experience

Brett Triffett is a Metallurgical Engineer, Project Director and Innovation Technologist with 30 years’ experience in innovation, technical services, operations and project development roles across gold and base metals. Specific skills include technical leadership and governance across all technical disciplines, management of operational and greenfields projects through all phases of development and driving transformational thinking and innovation.

Qualifications

University of South Australia
LinkedIn Profile

Paul Bitter

Non-Executive Director

Skills and experience

Paul Bitter has been an employee of Caterpillar Inc. for 24 years.  The bulk of his career at Caterpillar has been in the mining industry with responsibilities spanning from Engineering, dealer development, marketing & sales, technical support, training, mobile equipment consulting (application / economics / optimization), product development, manufacturing and supply chain. He held the position of Region manager – Hard Rock Vehicles & Longwall Mining at Caterpillar where he had Asia Pacific responsibility for sales and product support.

Paul also held the position as global product manager of Hard Rock Vehicles with full Profit & Loss accountability for in excess of US$500M in revenue.  An example of deployment of new technologies in this previous role includes the introduction of Caterpillar’s first electric drive underground wheel loader – the R2900 XE. He currently holds the position of Product Value Stream Manager with responsibility for – manufacturing, product development, technical support and full accountability for Caterpillar’s quality across  the complete line of Hard Rock Underground Mining trucks and loaders.   A pertinent example in this role was that he was responsible for the ongoing development and commercialisation of Caterpillar’s first zero emissions Battery Powered machine in the Construction and Mining industries with the R1700 XE underground LHD.

Qualifications

LinkedIn Profile