Gold mining and cybersecurity research supported by Linkage grants

Under the Australian Government’s Linkage Projects scheme, researchers working with industry partner Norton Gold Fields will investigate how to unlock rich gold deposits while minimising the release of toxic arsenic, a common mining by-product. The $360,000 project will be overseen by Associate Professor Miao Chen from the School of Science.

Up to a third of the world’s gold reserves are locked up in arsenic rich minerals and 5000 tonnes of arsenic is released annually through mine waste.

“We are going to examine the transformation of arsenic between oxidation states during mineral processing with use of novel time-resolved in-situ techniques,” Chen said.

“This research should give us vital information of the complex chemical pathways involved, which existing methods do not achieve. This will take us closer to reducing this toxic waste.

“The RMIT Centre for Advanced Materials and Industrial Chemistry is a world-renowned centre of research excellence in the resource sector and I am very proud to be associated with it.”

Professor Xun Yi and Associate Professor Ibrahim Khalil from the School of Science will investigate cloud-based data protection and privacy when outsourcing projects to third parties in a $330,000 research project with industry partner Medtech Global.

“We expect to help businesses cut costs in data mining and privacy protection,” Yi said.

“This project will also provide significant benefits toward helping Australia achieve its national cybersecurity ambitions.”

Data mining is the practice of examining large pre-existing databases in order to generate new information.

Anticipated results include new data and privacy models, novel privacy preserving data mining algorithms and a prototype of cloud mining software.

RMIT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation and Vice-President, Calum Drummond, said: “This funding is a welcome acknowledgement of the breadth and cutting-edge research being conducted at RMIT. These projects have great potential impacts in mining and technology for our research partners.”

Story: Jane Kenrick