Heather Kaminsky, PhD, BSc, P.Eng, NSERC Industrial Research Chair for Colleges in Oil Sands Tailings Management
Heather describes herself as a polymath – a lover of learning and knowledge. She started out heavily focused on artistic pursuits selling paintings door to door, publishing poetry, and acting. After high school she moved into the field of engineering and completed a PhD and BSc at the University of Alberta in Materials Engineering.
Heather’s PhD thesis was on the Characterization of an Oil Sand Ore and Process streams, where she learned about the types of clay minerals found in the oil sands and studied how they distribute around extraction. During her thesis she also undertook work to study the fundamental structure of some of the clay and heavy minerals in the oil sands using advanced characterization techniques such as quantitative x-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy. In her thesis she gained a deep appreciation for clay minerals and how they influence every oil sands process. This has spurred her passion for helping others to understand oil sands clays and earned her the moniker “Queen of Clay”.
Heather is currently the NSERC Industrial Research Chair for Colleges in the area of Oil sands tailings management at NAIT’s Center for Oil Sands Sustainability where her goal is to solve tailings by 2030. To do so she is hoping to help summarize and distribute the knowledge in the industry, articulate the key challenges and inspire creative, practical solutions.
In addition to her engineering & artistic endeavors Heather is also passionate about making society more inclusive. In 2008 Heather Co-founded Women in Science and Engineering Research (WISER) at the UofA dedicated to providing better mentoring opportunities at the graduate at early research career level. Upon moving to Calgary in 2009 she continued this passion by Co-founding Mentor UP Alberta! A mentoring organization targeted at mentoring under represented populations. Currently Heather spends her volunteer hours as a mentor and loves nothing more than helping others succeed.
Lois Boxill, PhD, MBA, MSc. CE, Principal Strategist and Assessor of Mine Closure and Tailings Liability, Mining Impact Specialists Ltd
An avid birder and gardener, Lois Boxill is an independent mine closure specialist whose work focuses on enriching the productivity along the interfaces of mining companies, Indigenous governments and the people and Territory represented, non-indigenous communities of interest in mining projects, and Federal and Provincial Governments. Driven by a love for people, awe at the impact that engineers (and Civil Engineers in particular) have on society, and a profound love of this planet and its creatures, Lois founded Mining Impact Specialists Limited to serve clients interested not only in a project’s technical considerations but also building the human understanding and trust needed to achieve outcomes that engender confidence and lasting pride.
Lois previously served as Global Manager for Tailings Technology with BASF (global chemical manufacturer), principal consultant with SRK Consulting in Vancouver, senior project engineer with AMEC (now WSP) in Burnaby, and as a project engineer working on tailings and hydro-dams with URS Corporation (now AECOM) in Denver, CO. Lois has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering (geotechnical focus) from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Masters of Divinity from the General Theological Seminary in New York, a PhD in mining engineering from the University of British Columbia, and most recently, an MBA from the University of Illinois where she focused on organizational leadership, and strategic development of bottom up/grassroots enterprises.
Andrew Witte, P.Eng., M.Eng, Senior Geotechnical Engineer, Principal | Vancouver, Klohn Crippen Berger
Andrew is a Senior Geotechnical Engineer with 20 years of consulting experience in geotechnical and water resources engineering on various mining, infrastructure, municipal, and industrial-related projects. Andrew’s chief area of practice is the design, construction, safe operation and closure of earthfill and rockfill embankment dams within Canada and around the world; specifically, he is currently the lead engineer for several major cyclone sand tailings dams in British Columbia. Andrew also holds various design and review roles for numerous other proposed, operating, and closed tailings dams, each with their unique challenges.
André R. Perreault, P.Eng., TSF Engineer of Record at Glencore Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
André did not follow his intended career path of computer engineering, nor did he envisage ever entering the world of mining and tailings. Initially in the electrical engineering program at Queen’s University at Kingston ON, until he had a fateful encounter with imaginary numbers one morning in October 1990, he learned of a new Environmental Engineering program within the Civil Engineering Department that promised an exciting future that could take him to many places. André graduated with the first class of this program in 1994.
Between 1994 and 2000, first as a junior engineer in Kingston ON and then as an intermediate engineer in Thunder Bay ON, he worked within consulting firms specializing in foundation engineering and geo-environmental assessments. There, he applied geology and air photo interpretation skills he first learned in university to gain a deeper appreciation of soils and geomorphology and the stories they can tell. With encouragement from his Thunder Bay manager, he jumped into his first tailings dam design projects in Northwestern Ontario, painstakingly completing stability analyses using the method of slices and spreadsheets before being allowed to use specialized applications. In 2000, André joined a gold mining company in Timmins ON as their environmental engineer and went on to truly discover his passion for dams and tailings.
Over his 29-year history in the mining and consulting industries, André has cultivated a passion for the promotion of responsible and safe design, operation and surveillance of dams, tailings and waste rock storage facilities. He also developed an acute sense of the critical role that site characterization and historical imagery analysis play in responsibly informed early concept design of new facilities and closure planning for legacy facilities for which little design documentation remains. André strongly believes in the importance of multi-disciplinary approaches to responsible tailings and mine waste facility design and management and the crucial role of tailings professionals in mentoring TSF personnel and the up-and-coming young professionals seeking to meet exciting challenges in the world of dams, tailings and mine wastes.
