Dr. Maria Holuszko brings over 25 years of experience in Mineral and Coal Processing Engineering, working with industry, academia, and government. She is a UBC alumnus (PhD 2006) and has been involved with university research collaborations in Canada, at University of Alberta and the Alberta Research Council, and internationally, at the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre, the center of excellence for mineral processing at the University of Queensland.
Throughout her career, Dr. Holuszko has also supported industry in a variety of roles: as a senior Licensed Scientist at the British Columbia Ministry of Energy, as an independent consultant for the mining industry, and as a Senior Research Engineer at Teck Resources. For her service as a professional engineer, she has been awarded Fellowship with Engineers Canada.
In 2014, Prof. Holuszko returned to the UBC Mining Engineering department as an assistant professor. Together with Professor Veiga, she founded the Urban Mining Innovation Centre (UMIC) for research in the area of e-waste reprocessing and is now co-PI of the new UBC- Research and Innovation- Research Excellence Cluster entitled “Microplastic, Health and Environment”. Her involvements in this field have included being a co-PI in the NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) program in collaboration with Prof. Clara Santato from Polytechnic Montreal, training engineering professionals in Sustainable Electronics and Eco-Design (SEED). The work of this centre has attracted collaborations from recycling companies, to explore ways to recover valuable metals from what are otherwise municipal waste streams.