Key People

Professor Andrew Dempster is Director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He has a BE and MEngSc from UNSW and a PhD from University of Cambridge in efficient circuits for signal processing arithmetic. He was system engineer and project manager for the first GPS receiver developed in Australia in the late 80s and has been involved in satellite navigation ever since. His current research interests are in satellite navigation receiver design and signal processing, areas where he has six patents, and new location technologies. He is leading the development of space engineering research at ACSER.

Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold has a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In 1986, he was an Assistant Prof at the University of Maryland, he started to work on problems related to Lunar excavation and construction which kept his interest until today. He joined UNSW in 2011 where he has been experimenting with innovative mining technologies for Moon, construction methods to build hollow beams using waterless concrete and studying efficient concepts to store solar thermal energy in the lunar subsurface. Leonhard has published 90 journal articles and over 110 conference papers.

Associate Professor Serkan Saydam is a Mining Engineer with over 20 years of experience in research and mining projects in Turkey, South Africa and Australia. After working as a Research Assistant in Dokuz Eylul University (Turkey) where he completed his research-based Masters Degree and PhD, he spent 4 years in South Africa between 2002 and 2006: 1 year as Post Doctorate Fellow at the School of Mining Engineering at the University of Witwatersrand and 3 years as a Project Manager in a world-leading mining company. In 2006, he joined UNSW's School of Mining Engineering. He is the originator and the chair of the International Future Mining Conference Series organised in 2008 and 2011.