Prof Francois Malan started his geotechnical career in 1993 and spent the next 11 years at the Chamber of Mines Research Organisation (later CSIR Miningtek). There he conducted research on the rock mass behaviour in deep tabular mines. His particular interest during this period was the time-dependent behaviour of hard rock and he used this as topic for his PhD thesis. In 2011 he joined Groundwork Consulting and worked on pillar designs and layout problems in the South African platinum industry, geotechnical problems in the deep gold mines and instrumentation development for geotechnical applications. In 2011, he joined the gold mining industry and was appointed as Senior Consultant Rock Engineering of Gold Fields South Africa. These mines were taken over by Sibanye Stillwater in 2013 and he remained with Sibanye Stillwater. In 2018, he joined the University of Pretoria as Associate Professor. In 2021, he was promoted to full Professor and is currently the Director of the Mining Resilience Research Centre in the Department of Mining Engineering. He has an NRF rating of B2 and currently has 1404 citations from his publications and an H-index of 17.

Over the years, he has received various awards for his contributions to rock engineering. These include five gold and silver medals from the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and three Salamon awards from the South African National Institute of Rock Engineering for best publications. The ISRM awarded him the Rocha medal in 2011 for the best PhD in the world and in 2017 he presented the ISRM Franklin Lecture at the AfriRock Symposium in Cape Town. He also presented the 29th ISRM online lecture during March 2020. He has now been appointed as ISRM Fellow and will be inducted in Saltzburg in October 2023. The position of ISRM Fellow was introduced in 2011 to recognise select individuals who have achieved outstanding accomplishments in rock mechanics and rock engineering and have contributed significantly to the work of the ISRM.    

Between 2007-2011, Prof Malan served as ISRM Vice-President for Africa. Prior to this, he was also the President of the South African National Institute of Rock Engineering for the period from 2003 -2005. Prof Malan is a Fellow of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, a Fellow of the South African National Institute of Rock Engineering and a member of the Society of Mining Professors. He acts as a reviewer for several rock engineering journals and is a member of the publications committee of the Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He has now also been invited to join the editorial board of the International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences.  

Gerhard Potgieter is a mining engineer that has been employed in the mining industry for 40 years, of which the last 25 years were in senior executive and board positions.

He has spent the last 13 years with Impala Platinum Holdings and has been the Group Chief Operating Officer since 2018. Implats is a South African holding company that owns several companies which operate mines that produce platinum group metals, as well as nickel, copper and cobalt. It is listed on the JSE, in the top 20 companies in South Africa in terms of market capitalisation, employing 56 000 people at its operations in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Canada.

The Group has acquired the Lac Des Iles mine in Ontario, Canada in 2019 and is currently busy with the acquisition of Royal Bafokeng Platinum. It has further committed to spending R50bn of capital to strengthen and expand its operations over the next 5 years.

Duncan Adams is an engineering geologist by training and has spent the past 44 years in the South African mining Industry in rock engineering, the past two years with the Minerals Council South Africa leading the FOGAP programme.

He has spent time on a Gold Mine as a head of the rock engineering department, more than a decade with the COMRO/ CSIR Miningtek carrying out research in backfill technology and rockburst prevention and control, before working for the MHSC as the Fall of Ground Programme Manager. Duncan then established his own consulting company focusing on rock mechanics training, FoG safety and working with the Minerals Council in their MOSH Learning Hub for more than 10 years.

After retiring in 2017 he returned to help with the FOGAP programme in 2021, a challenge that he regards as a great privilege to be a part of.