Cracking the code at MREC 2025
In this article, Dr. Isobel Clark, a mining industry pioneer and committee member discusses the upcoming Mineral Resource Estimation Conference (MREC) 2025. She shares her excitement for the event’s practical approach and its international scope, which aims to foster collaboration and drive the mining industry forward into the future.
This article was originally published by Australian Mining.
Dr Isobel Clark is a mining industry pioneer.
“I finished my degrees at the end of the 1960s, and in those days women could not be engineers,” Clark told Australian Mining.
“Even though I went to an engineering university, I thought I was going to be a scientist.
“However, I ended up working for the civil service.”
During her tenure with the civil service, Clark saw an advertisement to teach statistics and computational methods at the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College, London. The rest, as they say, is history.
“My supervisor got a call from a mine in Cornwall asking someone to come and help them match their production with their predictions,” Clark said. “I was about six months into the role. I spent three weeks at the Cornwall mine and that was it; I was hooked.”
Clark’s numerous roles in the global mining industry took off from there. She has worked across most of the mining value chain but now sees her role as an interpreter, connecting the ideas of geologists and their deposit characterisations with her other mining colleagues.
With AusIMM’s Mineral Resource Estimation Conference (MREC) just around the corner, Clark will be a valuable part of delivering the conference program as a committee member.
MREC 2025 is expected to bring over 500 mining professionals to Perth from May 6–7, showcasing leading best practice, case studies and research on mineral resource estimation.
“The whole structure of MREC 2025 is so different from anything I’m used to, and I do four to five global conference a year,” Clark said.
“The concept of having a conference dedicated to mineral resource estimation is incredibly exciting, and it’s not just an academic conference. There’s a practical aspect to the event as well to explore new methods.”
An original idea coming out of MREC 2025 is the Parker Challenge. Sponsored by Barrick Gold, the Parker Challenge gives mineral resource estimators the opportunity to create a classified model from the same base dataset.
The 2025 Parker Challenge will focus on orientation and getting the directions of continuity right, emphasising critical thinking and selectivity.
Add to that the lively panel discussions, interesting keynote speakers and informative abstracts and papers and you have a recipe for a great conference.
“The panel discussions are always a highlight, especially if there’s lots of audience participation,” Clark said.
“MREC 2023 had a lot of audience participation, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing the same this year.
“There’s also some really exciting papers that I’m keen to learn more about, some of them with titles I don’t even understand. I always used to say to my graduate students that if I understand what you’re doing then it’s not a PhD.”
While MREC 2025 will take place in Perth, the conference is a truly international one, with most keynote speakers coming from overseas.
Clark believes the international nature of the event is what makes it a standout conference.
“Australia has an incredibly wide mining industry but it needs to work with the international sector to move forward,” she said.
“The mineral resource estimation sector is multi-disciplinary and MREC 2025 has room for everyone, so we’re encouraging everyone to attend to help the industry move forward into the next 50 years and beyond.”