Sergei Sabanov
Associate Professor
School of Mining and Geosciences, Nazarbayev University
Speaker profile
Dr Sabanov has 25 years of experience in the energy, metals & mining, oil & gas industries. He has over 10 years’ experience in teaching/lecturing on Mine Design (underground and open mining), Mine Production Planning and Scheduling, Blasting Operations, Mine Ventilation, Mine Dewatering, Mine Geotechnics, Mine Safety, Resources Estimate, and Technological Risk Assessment Methods in Mining. He has skills using and teaching on modern mining software. Dr Sabanov leading practical workshops for visiting mine sites, working on full spectrum of a project, laboratory and field testing, estimating and calculating various mining parameters for the drill-and-blast, the mine ventilation, the mine safety, the mechanical excavation, machine specification etc.
Dr Sabanov has executed multiple projects and teaching at a time, tracking technical progress, and reporting on both to the University and to the mining company, and regulatory and technical review boards. The projects included researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, mining engineers and geologists. The work encompassed projects in mine design, operations, production planning and mining method selection for underground and open mining projects, sustainable development of mining, pollution prevention, and environmentally friendly mining technology development. Dr Sabanov industry experience enabled him to understand detailed requirements of local mining companies in mining specialists, and helped the University design applicable study programmes. Dr Sabanov was responsible for implementation of students’ theoretical knowledge to industrial practices, optimising study programmes to real life work of mining projects. Sergei helped students to reach out to mining companies to obtain practical experience in projects as part of their studies.
For the last 6 years Dr Sabanov supported a number of Business Improvement, Internal Investment Decision, Resources and Reserves Audit projects. For those he completed technical due diligence work, including Competent Person Reports (CPR) for stock exchange listings, financial analysis, risk assessment etc. His expertise lies in strategy planning, organisation, managing and working on technical studies (International and CIS standards). He also provided project finance advisory services to investors developing projects in the metals, mining, energy and oil & gas sectors. Dr Sabanov has built a solid client base and served as a company representative on multiple concurrent commissions. He has worked with projects in Russia, Kazakhstan and the CIS, Europe and South America. Dr Sabanov is experienced in a wide range of commodities areas including oil shale, coal, gold and silver, iron ore, diamonds, zinc, bauxite, potash and rare earth elements. Also he is highly experienced in the area of sustainable mining of oil shale in Estonia and globally, including conventional (drill-and-blast, selective mining) and unconventional (in-situ retorting) mining. He has authored over 70 technical publications in peer-reviewed conferences proceedings and in Scientific Citation Index magazines mostly in the field of mining engineering and risk assessment & management.
Research Interests
Risk Assessment and Risk Management Methodologies in Mining Projects
Sustainability Assessment Methods for Mining Industry
Oil Shale In-Situ Retorting
Acoustic Emission Methods in Estimation of In-situ Stress for Quantifying the Damage Levels of Underground Pillars
