Prof. Komar Kawatra honoured by symposium at the SME Annual Meeting in 2025

The SME Annual Meeting is one of the mining industry's great networking events and is always more special to mineral processors when there is an associated symposium honouring a distinguished member of our profession.

I am pleased to see that at next year's event in Denver (MINEXCHANGE2025) there will be a symposium honouring Professor S. Koma Kawatra, chaired by Dr. Jayson Ripke, Dr. John Uhrie and Professor Courtney Young. Sessions will cover comminution, iron ore, phosphate and plant operations.

Dr. S. Komar Kawatra joined the faculty at Michigan Technological University as a Visiting Assistant Professor in 1977. He was promoted to Professor in 1985 and chaired the Department of Mining and Materials Processing Engineering from 2000-2002 when the Mineral Processing programme merged into Chemical Engineering. He then served as chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering from 2007 to 2017.

Prof. Kawatra was made an SME Fellow in 1992 and has been heavily-involved with SME for decades and is an accomplished researcher, mentor, teacher, and lecturer. His primary areas of research in Mineral Processing and Chemical Engineering are in instrumentation and on-line analysis for monitoring and control of chemical and particulate process plants and treatment/remediation of chemical and industrial wastes.

He has received numerous honors and awards and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Mineral Processing & Extractive Metallurgy Review Journal having served as Editor-in-Chief of the Minerals & Metallurgical Processing Journal. When I last met him at the SME Annual Meeting in Phoenix in 2020 we talked about the increasing problem in finding suitable reviewers for papers for his journal and for Minerals Engineering. The journals have groups of dedicated reviewers but many researchers are reluctant to review manuscripts, although they are the first to complain if their work is not assessed on time - everyone is so busy these days!

With Prof. Kawatra in Phoenix in 2020

Next year's meeting in Denver will be particularly attractive as it also incorporates World Gold 2025, which fosters academic exchanges, shares technical advances and promotes innovation and sustainable practices within the gold industry. As the world’s most influential gold technical conference, World Gold 2025 also serves as a platform for showcasing industry-wide scientific advancements.

So much to look forward to at MINEXCHANGE2025 and MEI is pleased to be a media partner for the first time.