Gonzalo Ignacio Nelis Suazo is the new graduate of the PhD in Mine Engineering of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile.

The proffesional's research topic is "Methodology of Production Scheduling considering the creation of polygons and geometallurgical constraints", which focuses on integrate the problems of operational spaces, geometallurgical response and scheduling in a single optimization model.

The new doctor indicated that he set out to solve the problem of generating operational spaces manually and in turn define them considering the fulfillment of the production goals in open pit mining that meet multiple objectives:

• Develop a multi-element and multi-destination short-term scheduling optimization model that decides the formation and extraction of polygons.
• Incorporate the response of geometallurgical variables for the different destinations and elements of interest (recovery, hardness, etc.) in the scheduling model.
• Study the effect of different scheduling and geometallurgical variables in the creation of polygons.

The Civil Mining Engineer and Magister in Mining (2016) from the University of Chile, currently serves as a teacher at the Department of Metallurgical Engineering of the University of Concepción, and as a Collaborator in the Management of Undergraduate Memenship and the Thesis of Mining in Mining Engineering Department of the University of Chile.

He plans to keep researching the effect of considering geometallurgical variables in planning models. The workframe is limited and the interactions are often complex, so there is a challenge to propose models and efficient resolution methods, and that can capture non-linear or non-additive relationships of the variables of interest.

Congratulations to the new PhD in Mine Engineering!