Dr. Rostami is Director of the Excavation Engineering and Earth Mechanics Institute (EMI) at Colorado School of Mines (CSM), USA. He has a BSc in mining engineering from Univ. of Tehran, Iran and his MSc and PhD in mining engineering in 92 and 97 from CSM, respectively. He has been a faculty at Univ. of Tehran from 1988 through 2002, a full time consultant with major A&E companies from 2002 to 2007 (Brierley Asso, Jenny Engineering, CDM Smith, etc.) He joined the Pennsylvania State University (PSU), as Centennial Chair of Carrier Development in Mining in 2007 and moved back to CSM in 2016. He has over 27 years of experience in design, management, research, and teaching in the field of mining, tunneling, and underground construction. Dr. Rostami is a registered Professional Engineering (PE) in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (USA). He is a member of SME, ASCE, ARMA, ISEE, IRSME, IRRMS, and TRB AFF-60 tunneling committee. He is currently one of the Editor in Chiefs of Tunneling and Underground Space Technology (published by Elsevier). Dr. Rostami is a member of the executive committee of the International Tunneling Association (ITA) and a member of the editorial board of Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering journal, and the representing UCA of SME in the Mining and Minerals Engineering journal of SME. He is the current chair of the Research Committee and past chair of the faculty/student grant selection of SME. He has offered short courses on tunneling, shaft construction, and related topics for SME and other organizations. He has published over 80 Peer reviewed publications and ~150 conference papers, and over 100 technical reports and proposals, and reviews technical papers on a regular basis. He is one of the founding members of Iranian American Academics & Professionals (IAAP), member of the board of directors of Child Foundation, also the founder and incorporator of Professors Without Borders (PWOB).
Nicola Careddu, Ph.D. Mining Engineer, is Associate Professor of Excavation Engineering at the University of Cagliari, Italy. His main area of expertise is in Mining Engineering, particularly focused on quarrying, processing and economic assessment of dimension stone resources. His research work includes Sustainable Mining, Circular Economy, Geo-heritage and Geoethics and it is carried out both “in situ” and in the Dimension Stone Laboratory at the Engineering Faculty. Prof. Careddu is the author of more than 90 papers on international journals and as part of conference proceedings. His research activities are funded by regional, national and international entities. He is a scientific board member of several specialistic journals and he is and a member of both the organizing and scientific committees of the international congress “Global Stone Congress” as well as co-ordinating international conferences and workshops. He regularly acts as a reviewer. Prof. Careddu was the chief of the project “Reduction of marble waste landfills through the enhancement of CaCO3”, which was fully funded by Sardinian Regional Government. Since 2007, he has been the referring academic from the University of Cagliari for the R4ST (Research for Stone and Technology) at the Carrara networking fair. He is supportive of the efforts to link research with industry. He is a member of the PhD board of the PhD program in Earth and Environmental Sciences and Technologies at the University of Cagliari. Prof. Careddu is a member of the Heritage Stone Task Group (HSTG) which has been established as a formal entity of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). He has worked on expanding the network of researchers and promoted the set-up of several international agreements and memorandum of understandings with universities and research institutes, companies and organizations worldwide. Further details are available on his LinkedIn profile.
