Caving 2026 Organising Committee
Caving 2026
18–20 August 2026 | Mongolia
Organising Committee
Professor Andre van As
Professor Deep Mining Geoscience
The University of Queensland, Australia
Andre is an underground mine geotechnical engineer that has spent most of his 30-year career working on caving operations and caving projects. Andre has worked on, or had significant involvement in, more than 10 major caving operations and projects, sits on several cave mining geotechnical review boards, and has published widely on cave mining and caving geomechanics. In 1997, he and Dr Rob Jeffrey introduced hydraulic fracturing into the cave mining industry as a means of cave induction and rock mass preconditioning at Northparkes Mines. As a result of their work, they were awarded a CSIRO medal. After 22 years working for Rio Tinto, Andre formed his own consultancy in 2018, focussed on providing technical expertise to the cave mining industry. Most recently, Andre joined the Bryan Research Centre at The University of Queensland as the group lead for deep mining geoscience research.
Dr Daniel Cumming-Potvin
Project Lead – mXrap
Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Australia
Daniel completed his Bachelor of Mining Engineering and PhD at The University of Western Australia in 2012 and 2018 respectively. He has worked at a number of underground metal mines in Australia, specialising in the areas of ground support, monitoring and mine seismicity. Daniel is currently project lead for the ACG’s research project entitled ‘Ground support guidelines for rockburst prone conditions’.
Professor Khavalbolot Kelgenbai
Dean of School of Geology and Mining
Mongolian University of Science and Technology, Mongolia
Khavalbolot completed his bachelor of mining engineering and PhD at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology in 2000 and 2005 respectively. His research field is mining machinery and equipment exploitation management, controlling and monitoring open pit mining machinery processes based on their reliability and technical condition. Over the last 2 years he supervised the following research projects:
1. Joint research on key technologies of massive and green mining in underground metal mines.
2. Monitoring and controlling the operations of Erdenet open pit mining equipment based on big data and machine learning.
3. Assessing and managing occupational safety levels in Mongolian mining industries using system dynamics modeling.
Dagva Myagmarsuren
General Director
QMC LLC, Mongolia
Dagva Myagmarsuren M.Sc. is the founder and general director of QMC Group, a leader in Mongolia’s mining consultancy landscape. Mr Myagmarsuren has a strong academic and teaching background and possesses a solid, over 20 years of experience with a proven track record in leading teams engaged in mining studies including exploration, feasibility, mine development, mine production and mine-supporting infrastructure. He has actively engaged in policy research on mineral resource governance. In 2021, he (and QMC) hosted Mine Closure 2021 in Mongolia. Between 2016 and 2022, he served the Government of Mongolia as a non-staff advisor to ministers of Mining and Heavy Industry.
Professor Johan Wesseloo
Professor and Director
Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Australia
Since obtaining a BEng (Civil) and MEng (Geotechnical) from The University of Pretoria, Johan has been involved in geotechnical engineering in open pit and underground environments throughout 14 countries. He commenced his career in 1998 as a geotechnical engineer at SRK Consulting, Johannesburg where he was involved in open pit and underground projects in varying geotechnical conditions. In 2005 he was awarded a PhD (Geotechnical) from The University of Pretoria. Johan joined the Australian Centre for Geomechanics (ACG) in 2007 as a research fellow. During his time at the ACG, Johan has been involved in research, the supervision of postgraduate students and geotechnical training. He also performs geotechnical and mining-induced seismicity reviews providing him with the valuable opportunity to visit numerous operations worldwide. Johan was instrumental in the development of the mXrap software and many of the software routines and apps available in that platform. Johan is a Fellow of The Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM). He was awarded the SAIMM Gold Medal in 2006 and 2016, and the SAIMM Silver Medal in 2014. In 2019, Johan was appointed director of the ACG.
Josephine Ruddle
Caving Event Manager
Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Australia