Meet the conference co-chairs of the lead organizing committee, who are representing their home societies (MetSoc, SME, and TMS).
Christina Meskars
SINTEF, Norway
Christina Meskers is a senior research scientist in the Industrial Ecosystems Department at SINTEF in Trondheim, Norway. Previously, she worked at the industrial ecology department at NTNU, Norway and was a senior manager at Umicore (Belgium) in corporate research development and the precious metals refining business unit. She has a passion for innovation and strategy, connecting people and ideas across disciplines, industries, organizations, and value chains. Her work focuses on the contribution of materials and the materials industry to a sustainable, circular society.
With a Ph.D. from the Delft University of Technology, she has had more than 15 years of experience in the (raw) materials sector. Her professional contributions include co-authoring the Handbook of Recycling 2nd edition (2023), a United Nations' International Resource Panel report on the opportunities and limitations of recycling (2013), serving on the TMS Board of Directors as the Extraction and Processing Division Chair, and serving on the advisory boards of international master programs and innovation networks. She is currently the associate editor of the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy.
Michael Moats
Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA
Michael S. Moats is chair and professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Missouri-Rolla. Moats is an active member of both SME and TMS. His 30-year career has focused on improving hydrometallurgical and electrometallurgical processing of non-ferrous metals. He holds five patents and has published 140 journal papers, conference proceedings, book chapters, and books. He received the AIME/TMS/SME James Douglas Gold Medal in 2018 “for his knowledge and contributions in the field of electrometallurgy”. He has specialized in electrowinning and electrorefining for many years and recently has become involved in addressing the supply concerns related to critical minerals through involvement with the Critical Materials Institute and the founding of the Thomas J. O’Keefe Institute for the Sustainable Supply of Strategic Minerals at Missouri S&T.
Nathan Stubina
Sherritt International, Canada
Nathan M. Stubina joined Sherritt International as Vice President, Technologies in November 2018. Prior to that, he was Managing Director of Innovation for McEwen Mining. With 30 years of international industrial experience, he has also worked at various major mining companies including Barrick Gold Corp., Noranda Inc. and Falconbridge Ltd. He holds a Ph.D. in metallurgy and materials from the University of Toronto and a B. Eng. in mining and metallurgical engineering from McGill University.
He is currently a member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO), and was Vice President International of the CIM (Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum). He is a MetSoc past president, a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt, and a member of the Lassonde Institute of Mining’s Advisory Committee at the University of Toronto. He was named a Fellow of the CIM in 2012, a CIM Distinguished Lecturer in 2019 and a Fellow of the Institute of Minerals, Material & Mining in 2021. He was recently elected as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2022.