MDL Christmas Dinner 2024
MDL summer BBQ at Hani's 2024
MDL summer BBQ at Hani's 2022
MDL summer BBQ at Hani's 2021
Prof Mitri receiving Guest Professorship at the University of Science and Technology Beijing
Prof Mitri receiving awards
Prof Mitri receiving McGill's lapel pin for 30 years of service
Visit to Henan Polytechnic University in 2016
MDL research group 2017
MDL research group 2015
Technical and scientific contributions as an educator, researcher, and consultant in the mineral resource engineering discipline in the areas of underground mining, rock engineering, ground control, mine design, and ore transportation. Significant management and leadership experience gained through numerous university administrative positions, and engagement in professional society activities.
More than 30 years of teaching and research experience; Founder and Director of McGill Mine Design Laboratory since 1988; more than 200 papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings; supervised to completion more than 60 Master's and PhD students. Co-Editor of International Journal of Mining Science and Technology, and editorial board member of several other journals. Licensed professional engineer in the province of Quebec, Canada since 1987.
Dr. Thamer Yacoub is an expert in geomechanics and numerical modeling, boasting over 30 years of experience. He earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the University of Baghdad, and completed his Ph.D. in Geomechanics at the University of Toronto in 1999.
Joining Rocscience in 1999 as a Geomechanics Specialist, Thamer played a key role in developing several core software engines—EX3’s boundary-element engine, RS2’s finite-element and groundwater engines, Slide2’s groundwater model, and he led development of Settle3. He climbed through leadership roles: Vice President of Geomechanics Research & Business Development, then President, before being appointed CEO and President on September 1, 2020.
Under his leadership, Rocscience has grown significantly, expanding globally and completing strategic acquisitions—such as NovoTech (2021), DIANA FEA (2023) and 3GSM (2024)—broadening their toolkit for geotechnical engineers.
An enthusiastic mentor and presenter, Thamer has delivered workshops and seminars around the world—North and South America, Asia, Oceania—covering topics like slope stability, settlement, fluid flow and probabilistic analysis.
In summary, Dr. Thamer Yacoub combines deep technical expertise with visionary leadership. He’s driven Rocscience’s evolution from a university spin-off into a global leader in geotechnical software, championing innovation and user-focused growth.
Throughout his career, Mr. Al Heib has investigated scientific problems related to rock mechanics and mine safety during the mining production cycle. He has developed tools for use in field measurements and microseismic monitoring systems, data analysis techniques, statistical methods, and numerical modelling.
He was the scientific expert in rockburst and geotechnics for Charbonnages de France (from 1993-2004). He is an expert from the European Community (EC) for mines and underground excavation – Geotechnics, numerical modelling and mine design (TGC1). In the late 1990’s, he was involved with solving post-mining stability problems and safety in the underground storage of radioactive waste. He has published more than 120 scientific papers and official reports on these topics.
Rickard Hansen (PhD, MSc) is a researcher and a fire protection engineer, specialised in fire behaviour and fire safety in underground hard rock mines. In 2015 he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on heat release rates of mining vehicles in underground hard rock mines. During his doctoral studies he conducted a number of full-scale fire experiments on mining vehicles in an underground mine. He has published more than 50 papers and reports on the fire behaviour in underground hard rock mines. His research interests are fire dynamics in underground mines, suppression of fires in underground mines, fire and rescue operations underground, and smoke spread in underground mines. He is currently a fire expert at Sweco International AB, specialising in fire safety in underground structures/mines. Besides his research activities he has more than 30 years of experience as a fire officer as well as a fire protection engineer. A majority of those years have been spent on fire and rescue in underground mines as well as the fire safety design of underground mines in a number of projects in northwestern Europe, Australia and Asia.
Professor He Xueqiu is the secretary of the Party committee of North China Institute of Technology and a doctoral supervisor at China University of Mining and Technology. He is renowned for his expertise in Safety Science.
He obtained the Foundation of State Outstanding Young Scientist award and Foundation of Education Ministry Trans-Century Excellent Talent Program award. He obtained a 4th National Prize for Natural Science, two 2nd National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology, and four provincial level prizes. He also obtained five National Patent of Inventions and five Utility Model Patents. He has written 10 books and published over 200 academic papers.
Throughout his career, Petr has investigated scientific problems related to mining geology and hydrogeology, rock mechanics, induced seismicity, rockburst prevention and destress blasting. He worked in coal mining industry (1990–1997) in the field of mining geology and in expert service company for coal mining companies (1997–2009) in the field of hydrogeology and geomechanics.
Petr has developed and/or verified tools for evaluation of stress release due to destress blasting using seismic monitoring data, methodology for rockburst prevention in hardcoal longwall mining, methodology of safety reinforcement of gates in hardcoal mining. He is court expert in the field of geomechanics (from 2011) and president of the Czech National Group of the International Society for Rock Mechanics. He has solved scientific projects in the field of mining geomechanics and in the field of evaluation of rock mass quality for underground gas storage and the underground radioactive waste repository. He has published more than 80 scientific papers and official reports on these topics.
Throughout his career, Prof. Piguet has investigated scientific problems related to rock mechanics and mine safety during the mining production cycle. He has developed tools for use in field measurements and microseismic monitoring systems, data analysis techniques, statistical methods, and numerical modelling.
In the late 1990’s, he was involved with solving post-mining stability problems and safety in the underground storage of radioactive waste. He contributed to the creation of GISOS (Scientific Group for Safety in Underground Workings) and became its president. He has published numerous papers and official reports on these topics.
Mike has more than 20 years of experience in both surface and underground hard rock mining and has worked for Black Hawk Mining Inc, Hudbay Minerals, Xstrata and Vale, holding positions of increasing responsibilities, including mine planning engineer, senior ground control engineer, chief mine engineer and principal ground control engineer.
In 2017, Atsushi was appointed Associate Professor at International Organization for Advanced Research and Technology, Kumamoto University, Japan. In Canada, he studied mining-induced seismicity that takes place in deep hard rock mines at a depth of more than 1500 m. He developed a number of novel numerical simulation techniques to analyze the dynamic behaviour of fault-slip while considering its seismic source parameters and seismic wave propagation. He has expertise in numerical modelling, fault friction laws, rock mechanical behaviour, and hard rock mining.
Lishuai is an assistant professor at College of Mining and Safety Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology in China. His research interests are in ground control and rock support of mine roadway stability. He is also in charge of the international collaboration and exchange of State Key Laboratory of Mining Disasters Prevention and Control.
After graduating from McGill with a Master’s degree in Mining Engineering, Wei has obtained extensive knowledge and practical experience in mine design, mine operation, seismic analysis, numerical modeling, and ground control.
Over the last 10 years in the industry, he has progressed through roles of increasing responsibility from Vale Canada and Sudbury INO a Glencore company. Currently Wei is supporting long range mine design and major project studies for Vale’s Manitoba and Voisey Bay Operations, as Chief Ground Control Engineer.
Brad Simser is the Principal Ground Control Engineer of the Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations of the Glencore Company. He has worked in hard rock mining since 1990. His experience includes deep South African Gold mining (Anglo American), Lead-Zinc mining in northern New Brunswick, and Nickel-Copper mining in the Sudbury Basin since 2003.
The influence of microstructure properties of igneous mine rocks on their mechanical properties.
Laboratory Supervisor.
Discrete Fracture Networks Application for Rock Slope Engineering
Intelligent Early Warning of Geotechnical Disasters in Mines Multiscale Recognition of Acoustic Emission Characteristics and Damage Evolution Mechanism of Rock Fracture under Deep Learning Framework
Machine Learning: Supervised Learning Applied to Regression of Unplanned Stope Dilution (In Progress)
