MRIWA’s new chair: implications for mine design, tailings and R&D funding
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Dr Vanessa Torres has been appointed chair of the Minerals Research Institute of Western Australia (MRIWA), taking over leadership of the state-funded body that directs minerals R&D investment. MRIWA typically co-funds applied research in areas such as tailings management, orebody characterisation and decarbonisation of mining fleets across Western Australia’s iron ore, gold and battery minerals sectors. Torres’ appointment signals continuity for industry–research collaboration on high-impact geotechnical and processing projects, with funding decisions directly affecting mine design, waste storage strategies and technology trials in operating sites.
Technical Brief
- Torres’ background includes senior technical and operational roles in major mining houses, informing funding decisions on applied projects.
- MRIWA’s mandate covers the full value chain from geoscience through mining, processing, waste and closure research.
- Research programs typically leverage co-funding from industry partners, aligning project scopes with live operational constraints and data.
- Data sources for MRIWA-backed work commonly include operating mine sites, production datasets and site-based pilot trials.
- Outputs are expected to be directly translatable into mine planning, tailings design, and decarbonisation project implementation.
- Governance settings limit MRIWA’s scope to minerals-related R&D in Western Australia rather than national or global portfolios.
- For similar institutes, the model illustrates how state-backed co-funding can de-risk high-CAPEX technology trials in mines.
Our Take
Western Australia features heavily in our 493 Mining stories, and MRIWA-backed work often underpins the ‘Research’ tag items dealing with decarbonisation, tailings performance and orebody characterisation, so a change in chair can subtly redirect which technical themes get early support.
Across the 936 tag-matched ‘Projects’ and ‘Research’ pieces, AI and broader data science appear frequently in studies on exploration targeting and processing optimisation, suggesting MRIWA’s governance will be important in deciding how quickly Western Australian operators adopt AI-heavy workflows from concept study through to operations.
Because MRIWA sits at the intersection of government, academia and industry in Australia, its leadership changes tend to influence which pilot-scale technologies progress to site trials in Western Australia, affecting how quickly local miners can de-risk emerging methods before commercial rollout.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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