Jack Zhang is associate vice-president of strategic technology at Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) and adjunct professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He earned his B.Sc. at Shandong University and Ph.D. at University of Saskatchewan in chemical engineering. He began his mining career as a metallurgist at Cameco in 2007 and subsequently joined SRC in 2011 to establish mineral processing services. 

With experiences in engineering, operations, and R&D, Jack’s expertise encompasses uranium, potash, phosphate, rare earth elements, lithium, and medical minerals, with a particular focus on the extraction and recycling of critical minerals. He has collaborated with over 200 companies globally within the mining sector to develop and commercialize technologies. He has led the development and commercialization of several critical mineral separation and refining technologies from their conceptual stages to full implementation. Additionally, he actively contributes to professional communities through roles such as technical committee member, lecturer, reviewer, and author.

Tony Warner has over 50 years of pyrometallurgical industrial experience in Operations, R&D and Engineering. He retired in 2005 from Inco Ltd (now Vale Inco) after 35 years. Since 2005, he has worked for WorleyParsons (Toronto) and is currently the director of metallurgy, smelting and refining and has worked on many non-ferrous and due diligence projects since that time at all levels of development including technical lead for many RKEF projects including PTVI, PT Antam, South 32 (Cerro Matoso) and Horizonte Minerals.

At Inco Ltd, he has held senior roles at the superintendent/manager level in process engineering, plant engineering, process technology and development, smelter operations, pilot plant pperations, and R&D management in product and process research. He participated in commissioning and then operating the smelter at PT Inco, Indonesia and then spent many years back in Canada at the Canadian smelters and was a key player in the continuing improvements to reduce atmospheric emissions.