Event Presenters

Professor Dave White, University of Western Australia

Oceans engineer Professor Dave White holds the Shell EMI Chair in Offshore Engineering and is Director of the ARC Research Hub for Offshore Floating Facilities, hosted at UWA.

He has been a Professor at UWA since 2007 and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Dave has over 15 years of research experience in offshore engineering, focussed on pipelines, foundations and anchoring systems.

His work has led to 250 publications, 8 industry awards, 7 publication prizes and design methods that have been adopted in international design guidelines produced the API, ISO and DNV organisations.

Silvio Nicoli, South32

Silvio was appointed Manager Technical Stewardship on the inception of South32 in May 2015, accountable for technical governance, technology development and IP management across the Australian Region which is comprised of operations in coal, manganese, silver/lead/zinc, alumina and nickel.

Prior to this appointment Silvio was Manager Technical Standards at Worsley Alumina were the responsibilities were of a similar nature.

Silvio graduated from WAIT with a degree in Chemical Engineering in 1985.

He joined Worsley Alumina as a graduate and there developed his knowledge of the alumina business through various technical commercial and operational roles before leading the design team for the plants most recent major expansion.

Professor Hui Tong Chua, University of Western Australia

Professor Dr Hui Tong Chua, PhD (NUS), M.Eng. (NUS), B.Eng (1st Class Hons, NUS), is Professor of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering and the Chemical Engineering Program Chair at the University of Western Australia (UWA). His research interest covers Heat and Mass Transfer, Thermodynamics, Process Engineering and Waste Heat Utilisation.

Seven of his international peer reviewed journal articles are among the top 1% percentile in the field of Engineering in terms of citation.

One of his key research achievements is the successful spinning off of his catalytic methane cracking technology, now known as the Hazer Process, as Hazer Group Ltd., which raised $5m in their Initial Public Offering on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX:HZR) in November 2015.

Hui Tong is also a China Shanxi Province Hundred Man Distinguished Professor at the Taiyuan University of Technology, Shanxi Province, China.

Hui Tong holds a Ph.D., an M.Eng. and a B.Eng.(1st Class Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Jan Flynn, Shell

I have been working in applied meteorology and oceanography since 1987, primarily in the oil and gas sector. I have extensive experience in metocean data acquisition, analysis, and criteria development in most regions of the world and engineering applications, particularly for floating systems. I have been working on Shell's floating LNG projects since 2006.

In Australia, I am not only acting as the Lead Metocean Engineer, responsible for development and technical assurance of all metocean-related deliverables, but I also manage Shell's investment at University of Western Australia in the Shell Offshore Engineering research group and the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub in offshore floating systems (total funding ~AU$20M). This has brought me into closer contact with related disciplines of offshore geotechnics, offshore engineering and naval architecture, both in academia and industry.

I am chair of the Steering Committee of a joint industry project with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to improve tropical cyclone forecasting in Western Australia and co-chair of the Australian Forum for Operational Oceanography.