Lesley Warren is an internationally recognized, innovative researcher delivering new water management and treatment technologies for the mining sector through novel discoveries of the mining microbiome. She moved to the University of Toronto to (UofT) take up the Claudette Mackay Lassonde Chair in Mineral Engineering in 2016 in the department of civil and mineral engineering, and became the first female director for the Lassonde Institute of Mining in 2018. She founded the Mining Futures Initiative at UofT in 2023.  She has established a pioneering, multidisciplinary research program investigating the roles of bacteria in key processes affecting mining and resource sector waste environments that pave the way for smart, nature-based technologies to improve environmental outcomes.