Dr. Ortiz is a Mining Engineer from Universidad de Chile, and Ph.D. in Mining Engineering (Geostatistics) from University of Alberta. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining at Queen’s University, where he teaches geostatistics and surface mining courses, and conducts research related to geostatistics, stochastic modelling of ore deposits, sampling and QA QC, and geometallurgical modelling. Previously, he worked as an Associate Professor at the Department of Mining Engineering at Universidad de Chile, where he was Head of the Department, from 2012 to 2014. He was also Deputy Director of the Advanced Mining Technology Center, and Director of ALGES lab, concerned with software development for ore body modeling. He has several publications in journals and international conferences. He has also been involved in training of professionals through many short courses in professional development programs
Dr. Ortiz' research has dealt with geostatistics, stochastic modelling of ore deposits, sampling and QA QC, and geometallurgical modelling.
In recent years, he has focused on geological characterization through image and texture analysis on the visible spectrum and also with hyperspectral images, for modelling mineralogy and texture for geometallurgical modelling. This is complemented with research in stochastic methods for modelling geometallurgical variables in space accounting for non linearity, and scaling issues. The process is completed with the use of machine learning techniques for predictive statistical modelling.
