Outotec recognises young talent

We expect a lot of young researchers at Flotation '13, many of whom will have been encouraged to attend by our consultants Profs. Dee Bradshaw and J-P Franzidis. Only a week ago Dee was presented with an award for her work with young people in our industry.

It is also encouraging to see that one of our sponsors, Outotec, is keen to nurture young talent.  The company will be judging papers presented by students at the conference, and will be awarding a prize to the presenter of the best paper with a 1000 Euro scholarship. In addition to the award for the best paper Outotec will evaluate all the papers and posters presented at the conference and invite the authors of four of the most interesting for further discussions in the form of a dinner during the conference. The dinner will be a great chance for the students to meet and mingle, network and discuss with representatives from one the industry's technology leaders.

It is great to see companies such as Outotec developing young talent in this way. It is not the first time that the company has done this in Cape Town. At last month's SAIMM Western Cape "MinProc" conference, essentially a student conference, Outotec's Prof. Markus Reuter, MEI's SRCR '14 consultant, adjudicated and awarded the Outotec "Sustainability in the Mineral Industry" prizes.   First prize of R10k went to Mehdi Safari from the University of Cape Town (UCT) for his presentation/poster on "The effect of energy input on flotation kinetics of sulfide minerals in an oscillating grid flotation cell (OGC)".  Second prize went to Helene-Marie Stander, also of UCT, for her presentation/poster on "Evaluation of down-stream processing options for sulphide-rich coal waste tailings".