Dr. Amit Kumar Gorai currently working as a Professor in the Department of Mining Engineering at National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India. Prior to join at NIT Rourkela, Dr. Gorai had worked at Birla Institute of Technology Mesra, Ranchi for over 7 years in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He has published over 70 research articles in the area of reliability analysis of mining systems, machine learning applications for quality monitoring of ores/coal, remote sensing applications for environmental management in mines, etc. Dr. Gorai has also written one guide book, 'A Complete Guide for Mining Engineers', one edited book, 'Sustainable Mining Practices', and one text book, 'Optimization techniques and their applications to mine systems'. Dr. Gorai has obtained his Ph.D. from IIT(ISM) Dhanbad (Formerly, Indian School of Mines University, Dhanbad) India. Dr. Gorai is the recipient of Endeavour Executive Fellowship from Australian Government for working at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and Raman Postdoctoral Fellowship from University Grants Commission, New Delhi for working at Jackson State University, MS, USA. He has been teaching Mine Systems Engineering at NIT Rourkela for last 9 years. He has executed several sponsored research projects, funded by SERB, DST, TexMin, CSIR, UGC, and Ministry of Mines, in the field of environmental monitoring and management in mines. His current research areas are systems optimization, machine learning, GIS and Remote Sensing. Dr. Gorai is a life member of the Institution of Engineers India (IEI), The Mining, Geological & Metallurgical Institute (MGMI) of India. Dr. Sahendra Ram has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mining Engineering at National Institute of Technology Rourkela since December 2020, focusing on teaching and research in coal mining. Before this, he spent more than 21 years at CSIR-Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, Dhanbad, where he developed mining methods and support systems to enhance the safety and efficiency of coal recovery from underground mine. Dr. Ram obtained B.Tech. (Mining) degree from Birsa Institute of Technology, Sindri, and completed his Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines) Dhanbad, India. He also completed post-doctoral research work at the Institute of Geonics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic. His expertise includes Underground Coal Mining, Numerical Modelling, Ground Control, Thick/Contiguous Seam Mining, Instrumentation & Strata Monitoring and design of underground structures. Over his career, Dr. Ram has led over 120 projects, including two S&T projects of the Ministry of Coal, Govt. of India and one S&T project with international collaboration. He has published 67 papers in leading journals and conferences, and recently aquired two patents for design of roof bolt-based breaker line support and rib/snook for continuous miner based mechanized depillaring. He received MGMI silver medal and Coal India (J G Kumaramanglam Memorial) Award for contribution to the coal mining industry. Dr. Ram is currently leading two R&D Projects funded by Coal India R&D Board and TexMin Dhanbad along with several industry-sponsored consultancy projects focused on mechanized mining operations. Dr. Ram Manohar Bishwal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mining Engineering at National Institute of Technology(NIT), Rourkela, India. Prior to joining at NIT Rourkela, Dr. Bishwal worked as a Consultant (Mine Geotechniques) at SRK Consultancy (India) for a period of 2 years, with experience in delivering projects supporting PFS, FS& DFS and JORC level studies involving mine geotechnical engineering and mine planning. He obtained his B. Tech in Mining Engineering in 2012 from Government College of Engineering (GCE), Keonjhar, Odisha and then completed Ph.D. in 2018 from IIT(ISM) Dhanbad. His area of expertise includes Mine Geotechnical Engineering, Rockmass characterization, Slope monitoring, Stope Design and Optimization, Waste Rock Dumps and Tailings Storage facilities, Mine planning & design. He has wide experience in weak rock (R0-R2) sampling and characterization in varieties of commodities including limonite, phyllites, iron, chromite, diamond and coal deposits. Dr. Bishwal is a member of several societies such as International Commission On Large Dams, India (INCOLD), International Society for Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering (ISRM), Indian Geotechnical Society (IGS), and Institution of Engineers India (IEI). Ram's current area of work is focused on rockmass characterization and mapping using drone photogrammetry & Lidar mapping. In addition, Ram is a proficient user of multiple planning and numerical modelling software including Leapfrog, Surpac, Whittle, Datamine, NPVS, Gem4D, Rocscience Suite, FLAC, Plaxis, Pix4D, CloudCompare. He is currently executing two R&D grants from Ministry of Mines and DST each and also working with several companies in providing consultancy services. Dr. S. Bhowmik is working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mining Engineering at National Institute of Technology, Rourkela since June 2020. He graduated in 2001 as BTech in Mining Engineering and completed his MTech soon after that in 2003 and completed awarded the doctoral degree in 2012 on the sorption properties of some Indian coals for gas recovery. Before joining at NIT, Rourkela, he was associated with University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun as an Assistant Professor for four and half years. He taught various undergraduate Mining and postgraduate Petroleum Engineering students. He completed three years of post-doctoral research on unconventional reservoirs like Coalbed Methane and Shale gas adsorption, diffusion and permeability studies - one year at University of Calgary, Canada and two years at IIEST, Shibpur. He was also associated with a sponsored project on British Petroleum, UK for the pure gas adsorption studies on coal before the PhD research for one year at IIEST, Shibpur. At present, he is working on the characterization of the unconventional reservoirs like Coalbed Methane, Shale gas for adsorption, diffusion and gas transport behaviors through the rock.
