Death of eminent comminution scientist Frank Shi

Very sad news in today from Australia of the death of Franks Shi, Emeritus Professor of the University of Queensland's Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC), and I thank the Director of the JKMRC, Professor Mohsen Yahyaei for his posting on LinkedIn, which provides a background to Frank's life and work.

Prof. Shi's career began as an operator at an iron ore mine in China in 1971, and he joined the JKMRC in 1988 where he has been a research-focused academic, continuously working to improve the energy efficiencies of comminution processes. His expertise covered wide areas including ore and coal breakage characterisation, mathematical modeling of comminution machines and circuits, slurry and flotation froth rheology, and high voltage pulse comminution. He was the chief inventor of the JK Rotary Breakage Tester and the JK size-dependent breakage model, both of which have found significant applications in the mineral and coal industries.

Frank has been the co-author of many papers presented at MEI's comminution conferences, and although he did not travel a great deal he presented work at Comminution '04 in Perth, Australia, and at Comminution '08 in Falmouth, UK. 

Frank Shi (2nd right) at Comminution '04

Frank with JKMRC colleagues at Comminution '08

Frank at the Comminution '08 conference dinner

His pioneering studies on the application of High Voltage Pulse resulted to a breakthrough and innovation which is the core of a current major research collaborative on this topic and the subject of a paper to be presented by one of his JKMRC colleagues at Comminution '25 in April.

Our  deepest condolences to Frank's family and colleagues.