IRTC 2023
Keynote Speakers
Opening Speakers
Bernd Schäfer
Bernd Schäfer has over 30 years of international business experience. Prior to joining EIT RawMaterials as CEO and Managing Director, he was CEO of apt Group, a leading European aluminium company. He was previously the Vice President Commercial, Global Commercial Transportation and Industrial in Alcoa.
His area of accountability included global market responsibility as well as execution of the innovation agenda and technology roadmap. Mr. Schäfer was a long-time Board Member of the trade association of the aluminium industry and the umbrella of metal producing companies in Germany until 2020.
EIT RawMaterials is the world‘s largest innovation community in the raw material sector and has been mandated by the European Commission to manage the European Raw Materials Alliance (ERMA).
Constanze Veeh
Constanze Veeh works on raw materials policy in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.
Her work focuses on critical raw materials, foresight and monitoring. She coordinated the 2nd and 3rd Raw Materials Scoreboard and the 2020 Foresight Study on Critical Raw Materials in Strategic Technologies and Sectors.
Frédéric Motte
Frédéric Motte is a member of the Regional Council of Hauts de France, dedicated to the transformation of the regional economy and President of the REV3 mission. Before, he has fulfilled three terms as mayor of Beaucamps-Ligny and two terms at the Lille Communauté Urbaine, including 1 as vice-president, and he has been active as director of several semi-public companies (Euralille, etc.).
Since 1996 he has been associate co-creator of Cèdres Industries, an industrial subcontracting group present throughout France, active in designing, implementing and maintaining industrial processes related to boilers, piping and pressure vessels. In 2019, he reactivated as the tenth generation in his family the brewery Brasseries Motte-Cordonnier, which was founded in 1650 in Armentières.
From 2007 to 2019 Frédéric fulfilled multiple employer mandates: member and 2 mandates as President of the CESER NPDC; Medef Lille Métropole and Medef Nord Pas de Calais as Chairman (2013-2019); Medef National as deputy Vice-President (2015-2018).
Keynote Speakers
Roderick Eggert
Roderick G. Eggert is Viola Vestal Coulter Foundation Chair in Mineral Economics at Colorado School of Mines, where he has taught since 1986. He also is Deputy Director of the Critical Materials Institute, an energy innovation hub (research consortium, led by the Ames Laboratory) established by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2013 to accelerate innovation in energy materials.
Rod chaired the U.S. National Research Council committee that wrote the 2008 book Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the US Economy (National Academies Press). He has testified on mineral issues to committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the Canadian House of Commons and European Parliament.
Karen Hanghøj
Karen Hanghøj is the Director of the British Geological Survey. She is a geologist with extensive experience in research and innovation management and the minerals and metals industry. Karen is passionate about understanding the complexity of resource management, about environmental and social sustainability, and about the role of geoscience in finding solutions to societal challenges.
Karen holds a PhD in Geology from University of Copenhagen and has worked with research on geological processes in the lower crust and mantle and their associated mineral deposits, before taking senior leadership roles in research and innovation organisations. She is a member of a range of international committees and working groups.
Kotaro Shimizu
Kotaro Shimizu is a Chief analyst and General Manager of Sustainable Society Department in the Policy Research and Consulting Division at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting Co., Ltd. Next to that, he is the vice president at the International Rare Earth Industry Association, a lecturer at the International Institute for Mining Technology in Japan and endowed chair in Global business management at Economic and social policies in Chuo University, Japan. Also, Kotaro is a supporting member of Japan Society of Newer Metals and secretary in the committee on the comprehensive system of resource utilization at the Mining and Materials Processing Institute of Japan.
In addition, he is an invited researcher at the Environmental Research Institute at Waseda University, an Executive director at the Circular Economy Association, and ISO expert in TC298 (Rare Earth), TC323 (Circular Economy), TC333 (Lithium) and TMB/SAG Critical Minerals.
Gavin Mudd
Gavin Mudd is an Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, RMIT University, including teaching, research and administration.
He is specialized in sustainable mining, environmental impacts, risk management, water management and impacts in mining for a range of critical raw materials. Gavin has a range of scientific publications on his name and holds several research awards, grands & involvement.
Anders Sand
Anders Sand (D.Sc., Docent, QP) is a Research manager at Boliden Mines. Anders Sand holds a doctorate in Chemical Engineering from Åbo Akademi University, Finland and is Docent in Mineral Processing at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.
Anders has about 15 years’ experience in senior academic and corporate positions in the mining industry, with the main field of expertise in process technology. At Boliden he has held positions as Process Manager, Manager of the Process Technology R&D and currently as Research Manager. Furthermore, he has been active as Qualified Person at Boliden since 2020.
Tom Graedel
Professor Graedel joined Yale University in 1997 after 27 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He is currently a Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist at Yale. One of the founders of the field of industrial ecology, he co-authored the first textbook in that specialty and has published extensively and lectured widely on industrial ecology’s implementation and implications. His characterizations of the cycles of industrially-used metals have explored aspects of resource availability, potential environmental impacts, opportunities for recycling and reuse, materials criticality, and resources policy.
He was the inaugural President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology from 2002-2004 and winner of the ISIE Society Prize for excellence in industrial ecology research in 2007. He has served three terms on the United Nations International Resource Panel, and was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2002.
Anthony Ku
Dr. Anthony Ku is currently an independent consultant serving clients in the areas of clean energy, materials, and sustainability. He is formerly the Chief Technology Officer at NICE America, a clean energy technology incubator affiliated with China Energy, with responsibilities for strategy and technical execution in areas related to carbon management, hydrogen infrastructure development, shale gas technology, and energy management. Prior to joining NICE, Dr. Ku was a Senior Engineer at GE Global Research where he led advanced materials development projects and delivered three products to market.
Anthony has been active in materials sustainability for over a decade, including coordination of GE’s internal critical materials assessments and responses, and chairing the Industrial Advisory Board for the EU’s International Roundtable on Critical Materials. He holds a Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University and M.S. and B.S. degrees in chemical engineering from MIT.
Patrick D’Hugues
Patrick d’Hugues is a microbiologist with a PhD in Biotechnology. In 1997, he did a post-doc in Warwick University on High Temperature Bacterial Leaching. From 1997 to 1999, he worked as a R&D Engineer in LaSource Mining company. He joined BRGM in 1999 and spent 1 year in Uganda on the first industrial plant producing cobalt using bioleaching technology. From 2004 to 2010, he worked as Project Manager at BRGM and was the General Coordinator of a European R&D project (FP6 – Bioshale). He was also involved in EU funded R&D projects such as BioMinE and ProMine. From 2010 to 2018, Patrick was the Team Manager of BRGM R&D team working on process development & environmental analysis in the field of mining and recycling. From January 2019, he is the Head of Mineral Resources and the Circular Economy scientific programme at BRGM.”
Toru Muta
Toru Muta was appointed Senior Energy Analyst, Energy Supply and Investment Outlook Division in the International Energy Agency in 2020. As Senior Energy Analyst, he leads Southeast Asia region-focused energy outlook as well as works for the World Energy Outlook, the IEA’s flagship publication and analyses medium to long-term global energy landscape, and for the Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions, which explores the role of key minerals for clean energy transitions.
He also leads the Agency’s analysis on fossil fuel subsidies including its regular study focusing on global fossil fuel consumption subsidies by price-gap approach.
Corina Hebestreit
Following her PhD in English and additional studies in law and business administration, Corina Hebestreit worked for 8 years for the European Aluminium Association for communication, EHS and marketing. Then she became the EHS manager for Eurometaux (non-ferrous metals) and in 1997 she took over Euromines as the director of the organisation, which she left at the end of 2020.
In 2000 she also became the Secretary General of the European Carbon and Graphite Association which she has been heading since.
Min-Ha Lee
Dr. Lee is the principal researcher of the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) and professor of University of Science and Technology (UST) Korea. Since 2010, he worked on development of governmental policy on rare metals and critical raw materials at the Korea Institute for Rare Metals (KIRAM).
Prior to coming to KITECH he worked as Scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State Materials Research Dresden (IFW Dresden) in Germany, and the Ames National Laboratory (US DOE) in USA. Currently he serves as a director of KITECH North America in USA.
Highlight lectures
Pierre Heeroma
Exploration geologist and mine geologist Boliden, Sweden (1981 – 1988). Project leader at the Swedish State Mining Commission, Sweden (1988 – 1992). Deputy MD, Cogema Swedish Branch, Sweden (1992 – 1998). Geologist at Technology department, Cogema SA, Paris, France (1998 – 2000). Exploration Manager, Cogema Australia, Perth, Australien (2000 – 2004). VP Exploration, Areva SA, France (2004 – 2006). VP Exploration New Boliden AB, Sweden (2006 – 2009). VP Strategy and Business Development, New BolidenAB, Sweden (2009 – 2018). SVP Strategy, Business Development and Exploration, LKAB, Sweden (2018 – 2022). SVP Strategic projects, LKAB, Sweden (2022-present).
Xavier Constant
Xavier Constant is general manager of Nyrstar’s smelter at Auby in northern France. Nyrstar is an international producer of critical minerals and metals essential for a low-carbon future. It has a market-leading position in zinc and lead and also refines other metals such as silver, gold, copper, indium, gallium and germanium.
Xavier has more than 25 years of experience in the non-ferrous sector. During his career, he has held various management positions in production, technology, strategic projects and market development.
Moderators
Luis Tercero
Luis Tercero leads the Business Unit Raw Materials at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI in Karlsruhe, Germany. Critical raw materials and changing demand through emerging technologies are important themes in his work. He has been actively involved in the process of identifying critical raw mate-rials for the EU since its beginnings in 2009.
He is a member of the Operational Group of the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Entwicklungsfonds Seltene Metalle (ESM Foundation, Bern, Switzerland), dedicated to support research and development activities in the field of Rare and Critical Elements. Luis received his formal training in chemical engineering (B.Sc., M.Sc., Dr.-Ing.) in Nicaragua, USA and Germany.
Dieuwertje Schrijvers
Dieuwertje Schrijvers is a consultant at the company WeLOOP in the field of Life Cycle Assessment and Raw Material Criticality. She is a graduate of the Master’s program Energy Science at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and holds a doctorate from the University of Bordeaux in the field of LCA.
As a post-doc at the University of Bordeaux and within WeLOOP, she contributed to the development of training material and a MOOC on Critical Raw Materials in the project SusCritMOOC, and she co-organized round table discussions on the topic of raw material criticality within the project IRTC and published scientific papers summarizing the key outcomes of these events.
Alessandra Hool
Alessandra Hool (MSc) is the Managing Director of ESM Foundation, a Swiss Foundation for Rare Metals. ESM supports private sector and political actors in their decision-making on risks in the raw materials supply chain, and participates in projects to train specialists in identifying and limiting risks in the supply of critical raw materials for industrial processes. ESM connects experts at all levels of the value chain and shares this network with all interested parties.
Alessa has been coordinating various national, European and international initiatives on critical raw materials, such as the EIT RawMaterials education projects SusCritMat and SusScritMOOC on the sustainable management of critical raw materials (2017-2022) and the International Round Table on Materials Criticality IRTC (from 2017).
Nabeel Mancheri
Nabeel Mancheri is the Secretary General of REIA-The Global Rare Earth Industry Association based in Brussels. He was a senior researcher and project manager at the Department of Material Engineering, KU Leuven, Belgium. Before joining KU Leuven in 2018, he was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University, Netherlands, where he worked on his own Marie Curie project on REE Value Chain and Industrial EcoSystem in EU. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at The University of Tokyo. Prior to joining Tokyo University, he was an Assistant Professor at India’s National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore.
He has also worked as a consultant to OECD Paris, ICRIER New Delhi, and CUTS International and involved in research related to trade issues. He was a visiting Ph.D. scholar at Australian National University in Canberra in 2007 with a fellowship from Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). He was a visiting researcher at the Graduate School of International Development and Cooperation (IDEC), Hiroshima University in 2008-09 where he partly completed his PhD and was a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing in 2012. He was listed as a Young Strategist by International Institute for Strategic Studies, London and Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC in 2013. He also completed a certificate course on science and technology policy from the University of California, San Diego in 2014 with a fellowship.
Host for IRTC 2024 in Torino
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Gian Andrea Blengini
Gian Andrea Blengini received a MSc in Mining Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy (1994) and a PhD in Earth resources from TU Lisbon, Portugal (2006).
Presently an Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Torino (TU Turin, Italy) where he leads the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) research group and lectures on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Resources & Environmental Sustainability at undergraduate, master and postgraduate level at the department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering.
He has been a senior researcher at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in the Land Resources Unit from October 2013 to October 2021, with a role of team coordinator in projects and activities: (1) in support of EC raw materials policies, with focus on critical raw materials and monitoring of Circular Economy, and (2) targeted to the EU Raw Materials Knowledge Base, including Life Cycle Inventory data availability, coherence and quality.