an industry perspective. “Right now, the industry wants to know how to use data to be more productive and efficient, and how we can use connectivity to deal with the shortages of people working in remote areas,” said Adams. “So we’re seeing a lot around how to apply these technologies to do things more remotely.” Research partnerships between mining companies and universities have played a critical role for universities such as Queen’s in closing the gap between industry and education. “Industry itself needs to recognize that it cannot rely on universities alone to foster this change,” said Marshall. “It needs to step up, participate in, and financially support university R&D that educates and attracts these students to the challenges of applying these new technologies in mining.”
Breaking the disciplinary silos “In my view, the biggest challenge is one of disciplinary barriers,” said Marshall. “Mining tends to be a conservative industry and one that repeatedly believes that it can do it all itself.” To break those barriers, Queen’s has opened up its robotics courses to non-mining engineers. “We have seen mechanical, electrical, and computer engineers trained in the unique challenges and interesting opportunities for the application of advanced technologies in mining,” said Marshall. At UBC, walls are also coming down. “Mining is a very cross-disciplinary industry so we do try to break out of the traditional university silos and develop relationships across engineering, with sciences and with the arts,” said MacLachlan, citing the example of one of his department’s professors, Nadja Kunz, an engineer whose research focuses on sustainable water management in mining and works for both the arts faculty doing policy research and the mining engineering department. Digital and autonomous technologies are important, said MacLachlan, but his department keeps an eye on the big picture and trains for the diversity of expertise the industry will need. “There are many other areas that are part of the change toward the future within the industry. Water is one of them,” he said. Another area is the interface between humans and robots, said Greg Jamieson, a professor in the University of Toronto’s department of mechanical and industrial engineering who heads U of T’s Cognitive Engineering Laboratory, which conducts research through the lens of human factors engineering (the discipline that studies the interaction between people and technology). His course, which teaches students to anticipate and design for the impact of new technologies on the humans who interact with them, can be taken by the university’s mining engineering students as an elective. “Human factors engineering offers mining engineers a new perspective in thinking about the engineering work and problem solving,” he said. “And gives them the skillset to try to avoid a situation in which an automation deployment is unsuccessful due to how people interact with the technology.” Students themselves, said Jamieson, have a role to play in the silo-breaking needed for innovation and transformation.
“My advice to any engineering student now is to have the courage to take on something that’s slightly outside your expertise,” he said.
Revving up for more change As the high-tech revolution in the mining industry accelerates, however, universities are revving up their efforts to understand what else they will need to do to prepare the next generation. Ray Gosine, a Memorial University professor of electrical and computer engineering, for example, is currently a visiting professor at U of T, where he is researching the impact of the rapid technological shift in the resource industries – including mining – at the university’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy’s Innovation Policy Lab. “The work involves taking a step back from the day-to-day technology development and trying to put it in a somewhat broader context to understand how it intersects with public policy,” he said. “I’m interested in what we need to do as universities to better prepare our undergraduate and post-graduate students for future careers in these industries, which, like all industries, are subject to changes due to digitalization.” More change is also in the works at UBC’s engineering department, which is currently reviewing all its curricula. The process includes gathering feedback from industry and First Nation communities. “Then next year, we will take what we get out of that and begin a process of reworking our curriculum,” said MacLachlan. At Queen’s, “we are in the midst of developing a new research institute called Ingenuity Labs that will focus on robotics, mechatronics, and AI, and applications in a variety of industries, including mining,” Marshall said. “Stay tuned for some exciting opportunities for students to access a broader range of experts in these fields, including mining students and related industries.” Of course, most of the bright minds that have developed the transformative technologies began as students at a university. “From my perspective, universities have played a huge role in developing and prototyping the fundamental technologies that have formed the basis for the increasing levels of autonomy emerging in the mining industry,” said Marshall. “And through these university-based and collaborative research and development projects, we have trained significant numbers of highly qualified people who have become technology champions in the industry.” CIM
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Throughout 2019 CIM Magazine will feature articles on how the mining workplace is changing and the strategies young professionals will need to build themselves a career in the digital mining industry. Do you have an idea for a story in this section? Reach out to tdinardo@cim.org. May 2019 • Mai 2019 | 33