Professor Serkan Saydam

Serkan Saydam received his BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in Mining Engineering from the Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey and completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He then worked at De Beers for 3 years as a project manager in Johannesburg, South Africa. Serkan joined the School of Mining Engineering as a Senior Lecturer in 2006 and since 2017 he has been working as a professor. He is currently Chair of Mining Engineering at the School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering at UNSW. A key focus of his research is to address the current needs and future challenges the minerals industry faces. These are generally complex engineering problems as mining environments become more extreme and constraints are imposed due to increasing social, environmental, and health and safety standards. His fields of research include space resources engineering, ground control, mine systems design, mine internet of things, and technology integration and management. He established research collaborations with NASA, ESA and Luxembourg Space Agency, and KICT, as well as more than 40 research organisations and universities globally. He has more than 250 publications and graduated with 19 PhD students. Serkan attracted more than $15M in research grants. Serkan is known for founding and chairing the AusIMM’s International Future Mining Conference Series and co-chairs AusIMM’s AusRock Conference Series and Off-Earth Mining Forums. Professor Saydam is the High-Level Advisory Board Member of EU funded illuMINEation Project and the Advisory Board Member of 7Sisters Mission, the first Australian Mission for the Moon. Serkan also invented the Virtual Mine – ViMINE mining engineering game. Professor Saydam received multiple academic awards, including the 2020 UNSW Dean’s Award for Global Impact, the 2019 UNSW Vice Chancellor’s Postgraduate Research Supervision Award and the 2017 Society of Mining Professors’ International Tim Shaw Innovation in Teaching Award. Serkan is currently a Fellow Member of the AusIMM; President of the ISRM Commission on Planetary Rock Mechanics; Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) at UNSW; Deputy Secretary-General and Council Member of the SOMP (The Society of Mining Professors). Prof Saydam is also President-Elect 2023 for the SOMP.