Meet the team

Meet the team who makes it all happen. At Beck Engineering, our team is the heart of everything we do. From cutting-edge simulations to groundbreaking solutions in rock mechanics and mining, our skilled professionals bring their expertise, passion, and creativity to solve tough challenges.

Dr. David Beck

CO-FOUNDER · DIRECTOR

Mining engineering and rock mechanics specialist in open pit and underground mining, including for difficult rock and coal conditions.
Expert in Simulation Aided Engineering for mining and tunnelling.
Corporate advisor in mining strategy, mine optimisation and mine stability.
Principal Engineer for rock mechanics design, management and improvement projects across Australia, Africa, North and South America and Asia including:

– Concept development for caves and super caves – Block, Front, SLC and inclined
– Mine recovery
– Forecasting of cave performance – subsidence, stability, recovery and remediation of failures
– Open pit design and remediation, including very large open pits and surface to underground transitions
– Deep open stoping
– Tunnel failure and collapse investigations
– Underground coal mines
– 3D Dynamic simulation
– 3D discontinuum hydrogeological simulations
– Forecasting of mining induced seismicity
– Shaft and infrastructure design and planning

Specialties: Rock Mechanics, Mining Engineering for Underground and Surface Mining. Numerical modelling, Deep Mining, Mining induced seismicity, mining hydrogeology.

Dr. Frederik Reusch

Co-founder

Engineer with academic background in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science with a strong background in damage and fracture mechanics and more than 20 years of experience in numerical modelling for the mining industry for complex projects using state of-the-art non-linear finite element modelling approaches.

Mr. Evan Jones

Principal Engineer · Mining and Rock Mechanics

Experienced Principal Engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the mining & metals industry. Skilled in Rock Mechanics, Geology, Geotechnics and Engineering. Strong engineering professional with a research background in rock mechanics, and novel technologies for underground mining applications.

Mr. Eamonn Hancock

Principal Engineer · Mining & Rock Mechanics

A rock mechanics specialist with expertise in block and sublevel caving, narrow vein open stoping and open pits. With over 15+ years of experience in mining from operations to feasibility studies, with a track-record of implementing science-based decisions within high stress, seismically active mining environments.

Dr. Vladislav Levkovitch

Principal Engineer Applied Mechanics

Applied principal engineer specialized in continuum mechanics and thermodynamics with a special focus on constitutive modeling.

Dr. Sevda Dehkhoda

Principal Engineer · Mining & Rock Mechanics

Dr Sevda Dehkhoda is a principal mining engineer and technology specialist with over 20 years of experience in R&D and technical consulting for the mining and civil industries worldwide. Her expertise lies in rock engineering and rock fracture mechanics, where she has developed complex assessment programs to identify key mechanisms, parameters, and processes impacting the safety and economic viability of mining operations. Her current work focuses on managing complex geotechnical hazards and risks associated with high stress, high deformation, and deep mining conditions.

Dr. Mohsen Masoudian

Principal Engineer · Mining & Rock Mechanics

Mohsen holds a PhD in Geomechanics from the University of Sydney (Australia), a Master of Petroleum Engineering from Curtin University (Australia), and a Bachelor of Mining Engineering and Rock Mechanics from Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman (Iran). Mohsen is currently a Principal Rock Mechanics/Mining Engineer at Beck Engineering, where he uses his expertise to help design, optimise, and maintain some of the world’s largest mining and energy projects. The core of his work Beck Engineering is in simulation-aided engineering through which Mohsen applies his knowledge in Rock Mechanics, Mining Engineering, and Data Science expertise to help base metal mines in optimising underground mine design and production plan, analysis of underground stability, and processing of underground laser scan.

Prior to his current industrial role, Mohsen spent several years in academic environment, working as a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland (Australia) and as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom). Having worked on a wide range of experimental, theoretical and field studies concerned with geomechanical aspects associated with extractive industries, he has acquired significant expertise in coupled processes in geomechanics, including but not limited to oil and gas geomechanics, coal seam gas, mining geomechanics, rock mechanics, and hydrogeology.

Dr. Eduardo Cordova

Civil Mining Engineer

I am interested in the research and development of innovative solutions to mining challenges. Some of the tasks I have been involved while working and investigating are:

– Development of progressive deterioration models in 4-D and 3-D to account for induced seismicity in mines using block modeling techniques to quantify energy releases from seismic events.
– Conceptualization of mine models and geometries in three-dimensions for different areas of interest in the mine (undercut level, undercut geometries, production layouts, drawbell geometries, crown pillar, drawbell connections, cave shapes).
– Finite element analyses in 3-D using different FEM applications to analyze the effect of different mining sequences and geometrical configurations (Abaqus).
– Different tasks required to develop a numerical model, from pre-processing (unification of entities, steps, meshing, properties), solving and post-processing of the data.
-Interactive visualization, correlation, and analyses of spatial data in 3-D environments.
– Modeling and interaction of solids and surfaces in mine designs.
– Creation and conceptualization of geological and structural models for mining.
– Mineral Resource and reserve estimation and reporting.
– Geo-statistics, block models, and interpolation techniques applied to estimation of data
– Use of risk analyses tools to account for variability in the input data and its effect in the result being studied.
– Mine models in 3-D to show and understand the mine designs and its placement in surface and underground environments.
– The development of applications and generation of new technology to improve mining techniques.
– Virtual Reality and complex data display.
– Conceptual and Advanced Mine Modeling.
– Core Scratching Solutions.

Dr. Ayako Kusui

Principal Engineer · Mining & Rock Mechanics

Ayako is a highly skilled rock mechanics specialist with extensive experience in underground mining, particularly in hard rock and deep mining environments.

Her expertise spans a broad range of critical areas, including:

  • Operational experience in high-stress mining conditions
  • Stability assessments for underground mines
  • Rock mass failure analysis and management
  • Mining-induced seismic assessment
  • Operational management of seismicity and ground control systems
  • Ground support design, implementation, and assessment
  • Block cave monitoring and advanced data analysis
  • Optimising mine plan strategies to enhance safety and efficiency.

Mr. Andrew Shiels

Principal Engineer · Mining & Rock Mechanics

Andrew Shiels is an experienced Geotechnical Engineer with over 15 years of mining industry experience across both underground and open pit operations. Andrew has worked in both operational and corporate roles in Australia and internationally.

Andrew holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering and a Bachelor of Business. Andrew specialises in geotechnical design, data collection, instrumentation, QAQC and numerical and geological modelling.

Andrew is passionate about applying sound rock mechanics principles to support safe and productive mine design, from early-stage studies through to operational support.

Dr. Arnd Flatten

Principal Engineer Applied Mechanics

Engineer with academic background in Civil and Mechanical Engineering. Specialized in hydro-mechanical simulations of large-scale geotechnical models with more than 20 years of experience of Finite Element simulations.

Dr. Gero Putzar

Principal Engineer Applied Mechanics

Applied Mechanics Engineer with academic background in mechanical and aeronautical engineering, physics and numerical mathematics.

Dr. Tobias Rademacher

Principal Engineer Applied Mechanics

Applied Mechanics Engineer with academic background in mechanical and computational engineering. Passionate about rock mechanics, FE simulations and the development and application of robust and efficient algorithms to accelerate, streamline and innovate HPC workflows.

Ms. Jie Yang

Applied Mechanics Engineer

Applied mechanics engineer with academic background in numerical simulation, continuum mechanics and material science.

Dr. Traiwit Chung

Applied Mechanics Engineer

An engineer with extensive experience in Applied Mechanics and Mining Engineering, specializing in Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations. I have developed advanced numerical simulations for mining and hydrological applications using the MOOSE framework. My expertise includes modeling complex phenomena such as geological discontinuities and variable environmental conditions. I hold a Ph.D. in Minerals & Energy Resources Engineering from UNSW, Sydney, Australia. Additionally, I am proficient in visualization tools like Paraview, Voxler4, and Rhino, and also skilled in using Python, C++, and MATLAB.

Mr. Jack Lin

Applied Mechanics Engineer

I specialize in mine-scale flow simulation, using it to predict grade, cave growth, and to identify issues ahead of time (e.g. stability, rilling). I wrote the last version of Beck Engineering’s in-house underground mining simulator (FS4) and am heavily involved in the development of the current version (FS5).  I’ve also been involved in dozens of real-life mining projects using them, from mines all over the world.  Feel free to ask me about all the technical stuff.

Dr. Ying Da Wang

Applied Mechanics Engineer

Ying Da is a Senior Applied Mechanics Engineer at Beck Engineering specialising in computational research. He is the Lead Developer of FS5, which is a fit-for-purpose caving and ground control super-computing capable particle mechanics simulator capable of simulations of over 1 billion+ particles on distributed GPU architectures. He is also actively developing the next-generation of mechanical-hydro-particle simulators. He is an expert in Efficient and Massive Computations of Fluid-Particle Flows – which forms the basis for flow and transport in porous/open/granular systems. He is a world-leading researcher in deep learning and large-scale computational flow in porous media, and has created some of the worlds largest flow simulations and deep learning architectures. He obtained his PhD in 2020 at UNSW Sydney on “Machine Learning and Computationally Efficient Methods in Digital Rock Analysis” from the School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering.

Ms. Zainab Kahihia

Applied Mechanics Engineer

Applied Mechanics Engineer with a background in Mining and Environmental Engineering. Skilled in rock mechanics, mining engineering, and hydrology. Experienced in computational tools like Python, Abaqus, Rhino, and Voxler. Passionate about integrating engineering solutions with sustainability and innovation.

Ms. Aparna Gopinath

 Applied Mechanics Engineer

Applied Mechanics Engineer with strong background & interest in scientific computing, modelling, design & simulation.

Mr. Bernard Chu

Rock Mechanics Engineer

Supporting open stope operations, Geotechnical designs, LiDAR-based deformation monitoring implementation.

Making different ground conditions safer: High stress, heightened seismicity and squeezing ground.

Guilty pleasure: Analysing rock strength tests and stress measurements.

Ms. Dorna Emami

Principal Engineer · Mining & Rock Mechanics

Dorna holds a BSc in Mining Engineering and an MSc in Petroleum Exploration (Geophysics). She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Queensland, where her research focuses on the effects of thermal stress on underground structures and the application of analytical approaches to enhance stability and safety. Her prior experience includes mine design and implementing rock mechanics solutions to support excavation stability. She has also worked as a Tunneling Engineer, contributing to civil infrastructure projects involving ground support and settlement assessments across various rock conditions.

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