Hooman Askari Nasab, PhD, PEng

Area of Study / Keywords

Mining Engineering Mine Planning and Design Simulation Modelling of Mining and Industrial Systems

About

Hooman Askari is a professor of mining engineering in the School of Mining and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Alberta, Canada. He teaches and conducts research into mine planning & design and simulation of mining systems. Hooman is a registered professional mining engineer with more than two decades of operational, consulting, research, and teaching experience in the area of open pit mine planning and design. He has a strong track record of success in leading the Mining Optimization Laboratory (MOL) research team sponsored by industry partners into development, testing, and delivering mine planning optimization prototype software and mine simulation models to major mining companies. He consults as the Principal Engineer on long-term to short-term open pit production scheduling optimization and simulation of mining-systems through OptiTek Mining Consulting.

Research

Research Interests

My research focuses on using operations research and advanced analytical methods such as mathematical modeling, optimization, discrete event/continuous simulation, and intelligent agents to arrive optimal or near-optimal solutions to complex, large-scale mine planning/operations decision-making problems.

Development of new optimization techniques and uncertainty quantification for mine planning and design plays a vital role in reducing environmental footprint and financial risk of mining projects. Deviations from optimal plans in mega mining projects will result in huge financial losses, delayed reclamation, and resource sterilization.

My research interests focuses on two areas of research with the goal of reducing the mining environmental impact.

  Risk Based Mine Planning and Mineral Processing Design Integration, using:

• Discrete optimization
• Stochastic programming
• Multi-objective optimization
• Intelligent multi-agent systems
• Heuristics and meta-heuristics

 Simulation Optimization of Mining Systems, using:

• Discrete event simulation
• Continuous simulation
• Stochastic modeling

Research Currently in Progress

My research activities are conducted through the industrial research consortium, Mining Optimization Laboratory (MOL) at the School of Mining and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Alberta.

The objective of the research group is to focus on creative, far-sighted fundamental research addressing industry applicative needs. MOL carries out research projects with clear objectives, scope, deliverables, and timelines with focus on two major areas:

• Applications of Operations Research in Mining Planning and Design
• Simulation / Optimization of Mining Systems

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