Welcome Visitors at Comminution '14

Comminution '14 ended yesterday with a final wine function on a hot late afternoon in the Vineyard Gardens. Calling in to see us were Prof. Cyril O'Connor and his wife Nanette, who live just around the corner in Newlands. Cyril is a former Dean of the University of Cape Town (UCT) and is well known as the Chairman of the International Mineral Processing Council.



With Cyril O'Connor and Tim and Georgie Napier-Munn.
Apologies to Nanette who is missing from this photo

Four days earlier, UCT's Gaynor Yorath called at the opening wine reception for a small reunion of past Camborne School of Mines staff and students. Gaynor, who graduated in 1985 with a BEng degree in Mineral Processing is pictured 2nd right with conference attendees Dr. Klaas van Wielen (PhD 2000, now with Selfrag, Switzerland) me (lecturer to 1996), Felicity Wilshaw (secretarial staff to 1979, now with Grinding Solutions, UK), Andrew Wilkinson (BEng 1990, now with Metso, UK), Nick Wilshaw (BEng 1980, now with Grinding Solutions) and Simon Bailey (MSc 2008, now with Grinding Solutions).

The following evening Dr. Katie Cole joined us for the conference 'happy hour'. Katie, formerly with Imperial College, UK, is a regular contributor to MEI's flotation conferences. She is now a post-doctoral researcher at the department of Physics at UCT, working on positron emission particle tracking.

A very welcome visitor on Wednesday morning was Roger Thomas, who I had not seen for 44 years, since we worked together for a short time during my early years in Zambia. Now retired and living in nearby Constantia, Roger had an interesting career after leaving Zambia (see posting of 6th May 2013).

Back at the conference Dr. Megan Becker called in to discuss progress on November's Process Mineralogy '14 (see posting of 10th April).

Megan with Tim Napier-Munn

It was also great to see UCT's Prof. J-P Franzidis and his wife Rose at the Wednesday happy hour. J-P retires at the end of the year, and was for many years one of MEI's flotation consultants, before handing over to Prof. Jim Finch last year (posting of 9th December 2013).

With JP and Rose (centre)