Insights from the 2023 Best Paper Award winner
The call for abstract submissions for presentation at AusIMM's Life of Mine | Mine Waste and Tailings Conference 2025 is set to close this Monday, 3 February!
Need a few more tips or a bit of inspiration before submitting your abstract?
Read a short interview below with Ignacio Vernengo Lezica, Senior Geotechnical Consultant at SRK Consulting and winner of the best-paper award at AusIMM’s most recent Mine Waste and Tailings Conference in 2023.
Ignacio has over 10 years’ experience in geotechnical engineering, specialising in soil mechanics, with specific expertise in tailings storage facilities.
Ignacio Vernengo Lezica
Firstly, congratulations! What has the Best Paper Award meant for your career?
Thank you! It was a very pleasant surprise. We put a lot of work into the paper and were really pleased to see that it caught the attention of participants and organisers. Receiving this award was a milestone in my career and it allowed me to showcase my work to both local and international audiences. I believe this gives us the confidence to keep pursuing technical challenges and to try and find innovative solutions to them.
Could you provide an insight into your experience as a presenting author?
Being a presenting author in the Mine Waste and Tailings Conference allowed me to meet many new colleagues and clients who had projects where our paper could be applied. This led to interesting applications of our work that we did not consider ourselves. Given that the 2025 edition will be amalgamated, I expect a wider range of professionals will be attending, further broadening the experience we had in 2023.
What tips or tricks would you share with anyone considering on submitting an abstract?
To think about an interesting project they have worked on and to just submit an abstract. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the whole paper written. Once you get the deadline for paper submission, you will find the time to write the paper.
Did the presentation give you any type of career boost?
I most definitely did. The conference attracts a lot of professionals from both industry and academics, and presenting helped me to generate new connections and raise my professional profile in the sector.