Rourkela: The Department of Mining Engineering successfully conducted a three-day conference on Challenges in Safety and Environmental Management in Mines. The valedictory session of the conference was held in the Conference Hall of the TIIR building, NIT Rourkela where Dr. Bibhuti Bhushan Panda {Senior Geotechnical Engineer, AECOM (USA based firm)} was the Chief Guest of the function. He addressed the participants and talked about the aspects of engineering design in building tailing dams for achieving zero accidental rates. Tailings dams are used to store water and waste that come as by-products from the mining process.
More than 100 delegates from different parts of the country participated in the Conference including faculty members from IIT Kharagpur, IIT BHU, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, NIT Surathkal, Govt College of Engineering, Keonjhar; MECON Ranchi; Odisha Mining Corporation, Mahanadi Coal Fields Ltd. (MCL), Tata Steel Ltd., Central Coalfields Ltd. (CCL); SAIL, Rungta Mines, Arcelor Mittal Nippon Steel Ltd., etc. Some of the prominent speakers who delivered the Keynote during the conference were Prof. K Umamaheshwar Rao (Director, NIT Rourkela), Prof Ashish Bhattacharjee (IIT Kharagpur), D B Sundara Ramam (Vice President. Raw Materials, Tata Steel Ltd), Sabyasachi Mohanty {Director Technical (Operations), OMC}, Saikat Dey (Co-founder and CEO Guardhart Inc, USA) and Sarah Kolharn (CMO; Guardhart Inc, USA).
In addition to the Keynote and guest speakers, 44 Technical papers were presented at the conference. The recommendations of the conference include faster adoption of the advanced technology by the mining industry in India includes Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing. 6 students were presented with best research paper awards on this occasion. The participants expressed their maximum satisfaction in attending this conference and compared it to an International conference for including multiple speakers from USA and Czech Republic. Prof H B Sahu, (Head, Department of Mining Engineering and Convener of the Conference) congratulated the participants for full participation and enthusiasm for this conference and said, “Mining Department will continue conducting such conferences in future because safety of mining is much needed. IoT in Mining, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Geospatial Technology are the technologies of the future. Implementation of these technologies are going to bring in a sea change for safety and environmental monitoring and management of Mines.”
Prof H K Naik (Chairman of the conference) and co-convenor, Prof Tushar Gupta supervised all the arrangements in coordination with a team of 20 student volunteers. The summary of the conference was presented by Prof A.K Gorai while Prof Falguni Sarkar presented the vote of thanks.
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