Meet the individuals chairing the lead organizing committee as representatives of each of their societies (MetSoc, SME, and TMS):
Conference Co-Chairs:
Boyd Davis
Principal,
Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc.
Boyd Davis is a principal of Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc. (KPM), a contract research and development company based in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He graduated with a Ph.D. in chemical metallurgy from Queen’s University in Kingston. After consulting for a few years in applied thermochemistry, he formed KPM with his partner, Alain Roy. The company, currently with 20 employees, specializes in chemical process development—both at the lab and pilot scale—with techno-economic and process modeling in parallel. Davis is active with the Metallurgy & Materials Society (MetSoc) of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy & Petroleum (CIM) and was president in 2014. He has taught the processing component of the twice annual “MineBasics” course to financial analysts for the past 10 years. He also volunteers his time as an adjunct at Queen’s and has supervised more than one dozen M.Sc. and Ph.D. students since 2002.
Michael Moats
Associate Professor,
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Michael S. Moats is an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. His current teaching and research focus is in aqueous extractive metallurgy. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in metallurgical engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology and his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Arizona. Moats has more than 20 years of experience in industry, research, consulting, and academia. He is the author or co-author of more than 90 papers related to metallurgical and chemical processes. He coordinates the Copper Refinery Group, an industrial technical networking consortium composed of most North and South American copper refineries and is the project leader for AMIRA’s P705C Project, improving base metal electrowinning. Moats is chair of the Academic Grant Selection Committee and Executive Committee of the Mineral & Metallurgical Processing Division (MPD) of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME). He also serves on the editorial board of the Minerals & Metallurgical Processing journal.
Shijie Wang
Principal Advisor,
Rio Tinto Kennecott Utah Copper Corp.
Shijie Wang received his B.Sc. in mineral processing from Jiangxi University of Science and Technlology in China and his Masters and Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from the University of Nevada at Reno. Wang has worked at the Beijing General Research Institute for Non-Ferrous Metals, ASARCO Inc. (American Smelting and Refining Company), and Phelps Dodge Corporation (Freeport McMoRan Inc.). He is currently principal advisor at Rio Tinto Kennecott Utah Copper. His work interests include metal recovery, operational efficiency and profitability as well as process safety management. Wang holds three U.S. patents and has published more than 30 journal papers. He is a copper, gold, silver, and PGM/rare metals refining subject matter expert. Wang is also a Rio Tinto Alcan Six Sigma Black Belt. He has been a TMS member since 1991 and is former chair of the Hydrometallurgy and Electrometallurgy Committee of TMS from 2011 to 2013.