Rate My Professor Erkan Topal

Professor Erkan Topal is a Professor of Mining Engineering in the Western Australian School of Mines: Minerals, Energy and Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University. He earned a B.E. in Mining Engineering from Suleyman Demirel University, Turkey in 1993, an M.Sc. in Mining Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines, USA in 1998, an M.Sc. in Mineral Economics from the Colorado School of Mines, and a Ph.D. from the Colorado School of Mines. His academic and professional career spans multiple countries, including positions in Turkey, studies and work in the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Australia. He joined the University of Queensland as Senior Lecturer in 2006 before moving to Curtin University in 2009 as Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Mining Engineering. At Curtin, he has advanced to full Professor and leads the Mine Automation and Digitalisation Lab (MadLab).

Professor Topal's research focuses on underground and surface mine planning and optimisation, operations research, mineral and energy economics, resource estimation, mine automation, digitalisation, machine learning in mining, production scheduling, waste management, rock mechanics, and geotechnical engineering. He has produced over 165 publications, accumulating more than 6,100 citations. Notable works include 'A new algorithm for stope boundary optimization' (Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, 2010), 'Machine learning approaches for overbreak and underbreak prediction in underground mining: a literature review' (International Journal of Mining, Reclamation and Environment, 2026), 'State-of-the-Art Path Optimisation for Automated Open-Pit Mining Drill Rigs: A Deterministic Approach' (Applied Sciences, 2026), 'A new simulated annealing algorithm for simultaneous open-pit and waste dump scheduling' (PLoS ONE, 2025), and 'Production scheduling optimisation using mixed integer programming with machine learning dilution prediction' (2025). He contributes as an editor for the International Journal of Mining, Reclamation and Environment and is a member of professional societies such as The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.