Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences

Mining Faculty

Lead Faculty

Snehamoy Chatterjee

Snehamoy Chatterjee

  • Associate Professor, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences
  • Witte Family Endowed Faculty Fellow in Mining Engineering

Links of Interest

Research Interests

  • Mine Planning and Design under Uncertainties
  • Production monitoring and automated control using image sensors
  • Multi-point and multi-scale geostatistics
  • Mine safety, reliability, and occupational risk modeling
  • Statistical and artificial intelligence modeling

Teaching Interests

  • Mine Planning and Design
  • Geostatistics and Mineral Resource Estimation
  • Systems Engineering
  • Reliability and Safety Engineering
  • Blasting and Fragmentation
Nathan Manser

Nathan D. Manser

  • Professor of Practice, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences
  • Faculty Advisor, Innovative Global Solutions Enterprise

Teaching Interests

  • Engineering Problem Solving and Analysis
  • Systems Modeling
  • Engineering Design Process
  • Wastewater Treatment
  • Mining Methods and Materials Handling 

Research Interests

  • Biotechnology Resource Recovery
  • Environmental Consequences of Mining Waste
  • Engineering Education 

Participating Faculty

John Gierke, PE

John S. Gierke, PE

  • Professor, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences
  • Affiliated Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Hydrogeology
  • Ground water Engineering
  • Contaminant Transport
  • Subsurface Remediation

Research Interests

  • Field performance of air sparging for removing volatile organic chemicals from ground water
  • Volatile organic vapor transport in unsaturated soils
  • Sulfur dioxide interactions with volcanic ash
Thomas Oommen

Thomas Oommen

  • Professor, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences
  • Affiliated Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Computer Methods in Geomechanics
  • Computational Geoscience
  • Remote Sensing for Geotechniques
  • Geostatistics and Data Analysis
  • Engineering Geology and Geoinformatics

Research Interests

  • Liquefaction susceptibility evaluation at local and regional scales using in-situ measurements and remote sensing observations
  • Estimating liquefaction induced damage such as lateral spread displacement
  • Transportation Geotechniques
  • Documenting earthquake induced damages, especially liquefaction using aerial/satellite images that are sensitive to surficial moisture
  • Geotechnical asset monitoring
  • Machine Learning
Shiliang Wu

Shiliang Wu

  • Professor, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences
  • Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Links of Interest

Research Interests

  • Interactions among climate, atmospheric chemistry, air quality, and land use/land cover
  • Impacts of global change on atmospheric chemistry and long-range transport of air pollution
  • Anthropogenic perturbations to the atmosphere and implications for environmental sustainability
  • Atmosphere-biosphere interactions, especially in the context of global change
  • Impacts of aerosols on the global hydrological cycle
Paul van Susante

Paul van Susante

  • Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering—Engineering Mechanics
  • Affiliated Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Multiplanetary INnovation Enterprise (MINE) Faculty Advisor

Teaching Interests

  • Engineering Design Process
  • Mechanics of Materials
  • System Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering Practice
  • Finite Element Analysis
  • Intro to Aerospace Engineering
  • Space System Engineering
  • Space Resource Utilization
  • Senior Design Capstone / Enterprise Project
  • Product Realization

Areas of Expertise

  • Solid Mechanics
  • Structural Design
  • Finite Element Analysis
  • Engineering Design Process
  • System Engineering
  • Interdisciplinary Engineering (Aerospace, Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, Mining, Architecture)
  • Extreme Environment Design
  • Civil and Mining Engineering
  • Education
  • Optimization and Modeling

Research Interests

  • Extreme Environment Technologies (Space, Underwater, Mining, Arctic, etc.)
  • Excavation and Mining Technology
  • Planetary Science and Exploration
  • In-Situ Resource Utilization
  • Space Mining and Construction
  • Design Optimization
  • Robotics and Automation
  • System Engineering and Integration
Timothy Eisele

Timothy C. Eisele

  • Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering
  • Chemical Engineering Endowed Faculty Fellow

Research Interests

  • Particulate processing
  • Chemistry and thermodynamics of metals extraction; physical separation processes,
  • Sustainable raw materials production