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Honaker receives AIME honor

Rick Honaker, Mining Foundation Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Mining Engineering, has been named the winner of the Frank F. Aplan Award presented by the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (AIME). He will receive the award during the annual meeting of the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME) February 23-28 in Salt Lake City.

The award is given "in recognition of of engineering or scientific contributions that further the understanding of the technology of coal and/or mineral processing," according to AIME.

Honaker received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mining and minerals engineering from Virginia Tech. He served as an assistant and associate professor of mining engineering at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIUC) from 1991 to 1999.

In 1999, he received the MPD Outstanding Young Engineer Award. In recognition of his contributions to mining engineering education, he received the 2003 Stephen McCann Award for Excellence in Education from the Pittsburgh Coal Mining Institute of America. Honaker has served on the Coal & Energy Executive Board and was program chair for the 2007 SME Annual meeting.

He currently serves on the editorial board for Coal Preparation: An International Journal and the American Coal Preparation Society Journal. Honaker has developed an extensive research program in coal and mineral processing with an emphasis in fine particle separation processes. Enhanced gravity separators and advanced froth flotation systems have received his greatest attention and he recently co-edited the SME book, Advances in Gravity Concentration. His research findings have been reported in more than 120 technical publications and reports.