Telemining pioneer seeks position as university chair.

Inco's former technical leader plans to share expertise with students, mining industry worldwide

The visionary who pioneered Inco's revolutionary telemining processes is bringing his expertise to Laurentian University.

Greg Baiden, who first coined the phrase 'telemining', resigned his position as manager of Inco's mine research divisionin Sudbury in June and moves across town this fall to mentor the next generation of mining engineers.

Aiming on transforming Laurentian's school of engineering department into "one of the best mining schools in the world."

Baiden, 45, is in line for a prestigious Canadian Research Chair's (CRC) position at Laurentian, after which he becomes a full professor.

The CRC is a position created by the federal government to entice acknowledged and world-renowned industry experts into university teaching positions. Baiden is one of Laurentian's nominees being sent in to an adjudication panel. An announcement is expected in late September. There is also talk he is being groomed as director of Laurentian's engineering department in 2002.

As Inco's technical team leader, Baiden was instrumental in introducing some of the most advanced mining technology in the world. He oversaw the development of Inco's Mining Automation Program (MAP), a $28-million investment involving five years of research.

The MAP project explores the potential of robotic automation to improve efficiency and cost structure of mining underground ore bodies.

Together with Canmet, the federal government's research arm, Baiden pulled together collaborations with companies like Swedish equipment supplier Sandvik Tamrock to blast, drill, mine and excavate ore bodies.

Through labour leaders are not overly enthusiastic about losing members to automation, Baiden wants to completely eliminate the physical danger, dirt and grunt work from mining and transform it into a sophisticated high-tech sector.

Inco has introduced tele-operated drilling and ore-hauling into production at three of its mines in Sudbury. The system, using a cable network connected to high-frequency radio antennas on the vehicles to transmit voice, data and video, has captured the imagination of the world mining media which has descended on Sudbury.

With his long-standing ties with Laurentian as an adjunct professor, Baiden helped draft the school of engineering strategic vision paper. Soon after he was approached by school officials to consider implementing it.

Baiden was weighing a similar offer from the University of British Columbia, but elected to stay close to the mining industry in Sudbury, his home for the past 15 years.

Though he relishes the chance to nurture young minds, the move also provides an entrepreneurial opportunity to transfer his accumulated knowledge into the open market.

Together with three partners, Baiden plans to launch his own business this fall with the idea of building above-ground operations centres for mines all, over the world. Conceivably drills at a remote mine could be run from an operator in Montreal and scoop trains from Toronto with controls transferred to another centre in Tokyo and Paris to ensure round-the-clock operations.

"A startup business like this with links to a university has way more flexibility to make this kind of thing happen than a big business like Inco."

It is that kind of outside-the-box thinking that has placed Baiden's name in the Rolodex of technologists at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab, the specialists for the anticipated next stage of future Mars missions.

After window shopping in Sudbury early the summer, space officials came away impressed with Inco's teledrilling work and offered Baiden a position on a special review committee should they opt to drill for core samples on the red planet.