Biography

Chilean-Australian mining professional. I am Geologist with formation and experience in geometallurgy, applied mineralogy and comminution modelling.
I recently (2020) finished my PhD in mineral processing at SMI JKMRC at The University of Queensland-Australia. I did a 1-year post-doc at the same University and now, im an Assistant professor at the University of Chile.

Since I graduated as Geologist in 2012 my focus has been to relate geological characteristics of ore deposits to their metallurgical response, in order to improve current processing performance and design stages. That motivation led me to conduct a PhD in minerals processing at UQ.

Through experimentation and analysis of different datasets (geological databases from different sources, batch experiments, plant trials and plant information) I've developed a physical understanding of the influence of geological characteristics on minerals processing.

My master thesis focused on a multivariate statistical analysis of flotation performance of different sulphides zones. In my PhD and post-doc work, I focused on understanding and modelling the rock characteristics that affect comminution performance. I also worked for 2 years in Chile as a consultant for geomet projects in the different stages of mineral processing from flotation to tailing thickening process. So, I have experience in data analysis, comminution modelling, geochemical modelling, metallurgical testing for circuit optimisation. And skills in Matlab, Python programming languages, image analysis using object-oriented software and Microsoft office.

I believe that the technological revolution that we are facing will lead us to predict processing characteristics of rocks much earlier in the mining chain which can change the way that we design our mines and processing plants for a more sustainable process.

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Pia identifies as culturally and linguistically diverse.

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