New chair at [Sudbury’s] CEMI [mining research] – by Harold Carmichael (Sudbury Star – July 27, 2011)

The Sudbury Star, the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper. hcarmichael@thesudburystar.com

The Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation at Laurentian University now has a Research Chair for Holistic Mining Practices. Douglas Morrison, who had been Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation’s vice-president, will head the new post announced Tuesday.

The position is being created thanks to $823,000 from the province’s Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation’s Emerging Technology Program.

“I do know it’s going to create a better milieu for mining,” said Sudbury Liberal MPP Rick Bartolucci, who announced the money at a press conference at the Willet Green Miller Centre on the Laurentian campus. “This research, this innovation is going to create greater numbers of jobs.”

Morrison, who has 30 years experience in the mining field, including time with both Falconbridge and Inco, has also worked for Golder Associates, serving as the company’s Global Mining Sector leader from 2005-10 before joining the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation.

He has also headed MIRARCO (Mining Innovation, Rehabilitation and Applied Research), a not-for-profit corporation based at Laurentian that operates with support from the private and public sectors to develop innovative solutions for the mining sector.

“The mining industry is not known for winning a lot of Nobel prizes,” he said. “We have no intention of creating an innovation that we contain to ourselves. But we have every intention of seeing that innovation applied in the mining field.

“We want to take the things we have developed here and effect them all over the world.”

Morrison, who said he has spent half of his career in the mining sector in Greater Sudbury, said he has a very broad understanding of the industry.

“The industry as a whole now is searching for the best possible solutions for things such as improving the mining environment and protecting the environment,” he said. “To meet the challenges of today, the global mining industry will have to change.

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